“Known as Simian, the platform was built after Google’s Mac Operations and Security teams evaluated several Mac package deployment tools and failed to find one that suited their needs,” Metz reports. “After alleged Chinese hackers broke into Google’s internal systems in December of 2009, reports indicated that the company had decide to abandon Windows machines entirely and move its entire staff to Mac and Linux machines, and judging from our conversations with company employees, this is indeed the case.”
Metz reports, “According to Google, Simian is designed to deploy new or updated software to a single Mac or tens of thousands of Macs. It can push out security patches to Macs across internal networks or VPNs as well as machines on other networks. It can require the installation of some software packages while allowing others to be optional. And it can manage updates provided by Apple.”
More info and links in the full article here.
So easy a monkey can do it!
And of course they have to make it open source just because.
You will, however, have to deal with random lines of Shakespeare evolving on your desktop.
Has google come up with a vehicle for virus and malware attacks on Mac OSX?
Taking a page out of history Eric? Google the outcome.
I don’t like this at all. To deploy remotely their platform has to overcome the safeguard of having a real person OK new applications. This is how the whole virus universe got started on Windows.
And furthermore, if they make it open source and expose code that wouldn’t otherwise be known that is a real threat.
And even worse, what if they figure out a way to deploy Google code to my Mac at home? Google would never do that would they? They aren’t evil, after all, are they?
Hijacked
This is the kind of news that deserves above-the-fold coverage!
Google has finally woken up to the fact that Macintosh is the superior platform.
That others are watching this story with great interest, I have no doubt. It speaks volumes about Micrsoft’s ability to protect state secrets.
Macintosh. We can keep a secret.
@zeke
Relax, this story does not mean what you think it means.
Google is doing the grunt work to lay the foundation for any large enterprise or federal agency to deploy proprietary company software to their Macintosh platform.
That they are working in concert with the NSA, I have no doubts. This is a matter of national security and it’s in our government’s best interest to help preserve Google’s company secrets.
We’ll be reading about this for years to come as more companies follow suit.
I predict there’ll come a day when Steve Job’s is presented with this nation’s highest honor for designing a computer platform that empowered its citizenry to thwart communist aggression, corporate espionage, and to keep America safe.
Macintosh. We Can Keep A Secret.
Google is betting everyone’s going to covert to Macs
Like he says, basically it a lookahead and thumbs up for the superior OS
Google, now designing mole software for OS-X!
I wonder how much of it was copy/pasted from someone else’s work.
Did anyone else catch today’s announcement out of Redmond?
IE bug affects 900 million users! In an effort to preclude a mass migration to third-party browsers, Microsoft claims Windows is at fault and not IE.
Whatever, your shits weak Microsoft. You simply can’t do anything right, even when your reputation is on the line.
Hey, isn’t Simian a Ballmer clone?.
got a link ?
is this the first great act of the Bababooey era? The Silver Fox era?
When is Google open-sourcing their search engine?
MICROSOFT DOES IT AGAIN!
Does anyone know of a comparison of Google’s Simian with the Casper Suite (that’s been around for several years)?
Google’s Simian is an in-house solution for the deployment and maintenance of the Mac platform and the best and the brightest engineers will have an opportunity to evolutionize the process because its an open process, hence the name.
Casper is the successful commercial solution from JAMF and I’m sure they’re well aware of Google’s needs and probably wished ’em luck in reinventing the wheel, when Google balked at accepting their services.
But, we all know Google has never been one to deploy off-the-shelf solutions of software and would it surprise anyone that GMail probably started life as an in-house email solution?
Google prides itself on its software engineers and their enormous wealth of corporate knowledge, so tossing out a protocol for normalizing Macintosh in enterprise is just one more proprietary solution that could find its way into the hands of the public, which probably concerns the folks over at JAMF.
But I can tell you, the How Of It is not the issue, it’s the why, that is the single greatest impact facing JAMF. More enterprises are concerned with the percieved added cost of deploying Macintosh versus PCs. Money is the objection.
JAMF commissioned a study from Clearworks, which yielded lots of useful data and they now use that study to deflect objections and address any concerns the CFO may have, I’m sure.
The fact is, Google is so huge and so infused in millions of American lives, they’ve become a national security risk of the highest order, and when you’re receiving marching orders from the NSA, you don’t go outside for solutions.
Google’s migration to Macintosh sends a message on so many levels, to the world that, Google is taking a serious stand to protect themselves, and by proxy, its clients’ privacy, so I say more power to them.