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My advice: Try to avoid making business decisions for emotional reasons. Do business based on rational analysis of the facts, or it will cost you in the long
by jasonkester 16y ago
My advice: Try to avoid making business decisions for emotional reasons. Do business based on rational analysis of the facts, or it will cost you in the long run.
Google seems to be ignoring that advice, ditching an entire operating system and all the potentially cool stuff that comes with it because they're a company full of developers who don't particularly like Windows, and because they compete with Microsoft and therefore hold a bit of a grudge.
They're certainly within their rights to do this, and they can justify it to themselves as being for "security reasons", but in the end all it will do is weaken them a little bit.
- lelele 16y agoOf course they are not making a business decision for emotional reasons. By choosing an open source OS, Google gains more control on its systems, and avoids using a product of a competitor. Moreover, Google trusts its employees' judgement about a product: if you think your employees are competent, then you listen to them. If something, their decision weakens Microsoft.
- jasonkester 16y agoSure they are. They're saying "Windows has nothing to offer us, and there is no Windows software that our developers might want that justifies having Windows machines in our offices." If you work at Google and want to use, for example, CodeSmith, you have to get special permission from the CIO to build a Windows machine to install it on. Clearly CodeSmith is a good tool that developers might want to use, but because of management's vague fear of "security concerns", it's now off the table for your average dev.
- lelele 16y agoI guess this is a case where you choose not to buy a restaurant because you happen to like a specific dish ^_^ My understanding anyway is that Windows is allowed, if you can demonstrate a strong enough case for it.