I don't know about needing approval directly from the CIO, but last I talked to a friend of mine that works as a sys admin at Google, he did mention that they w

I don't know about needing approval directly from the CIO, but last I talked to a friend of mine that works as a sys admin at Google, he did mention that they were requiring users to have to be able to make a business case for getting a Windows machine, otherwise they were deploying all Linux and Mac systems. This has been maybe 4 or 5 months ago now, not sure what, if anything, has changed since then.