The June 11, 2007 edition of eWeek magazine has an interesting article called “Google keeps an eye on open source.” Chris DiBona responds to a series of questions about Google’s use of open-source software, but this comment stands above the rest:

Every time you use Google, you’re using a Linux machine.

If that isn’t doesn’t convince a corporate CIO to consider Linux, I can’t imagine what will. Another interesting tidbit: Until Java was recently open-sourced, Google had a source code agreement with Sun to provide patches/bug fixes. Said DiBona,

We have a lot of fairly advanced Java development going on at the company. We have folks like Joshua Bloch working for us, and he’s a very prominent Java developer and he’s involved in the Java Community Process very heavily. So we always had a way of getting patches in and some features developed … But with it being open source, it’s actually better for us … we can offer those fixes up without as much ceremony.

If anything, statements like this are a good indicator of whether Java still has “legs” in the high-end commercial market. It sounds like Google had a pretty heavy commitment to using the language.