Google is discontinuing the internal use of the Windows operating system for safety precautions after the series of hacking incidents, report today by Financial Times.

Citing various officials, the newspaper said the decision to migrate to another operating system, including Apple’s Mac OS or Linux, began to be mooted in January after Google’s operations in China were attacked by hackers.

The Internet security company McAfee said at the time that an attack on Google and other businesses exploiting an unknown vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser that was vulnerable in all recent versions of Windows.

Google, which already offers email, web and other software products that compete with those offered by Microsoft, is developing its own operating system based on the Chrome browser, which will be focused initially on netbooks, or low-cost PCs.