What Linux distribution is used in Google?

A month ago it became known that Google wanted to get rid of security threats that constantly appear in Windows, and announced that all employees of the company would have to work since then either Mac OS X or Linux.

 

Leaving aside the debate on the real reasons for Google, and further assuming that there will be many of the "non-technical Google" users probably prefer Mac OS X to Linux, the question is clear: if a Google employee chooses Linux operating system ... what distribution or distributions can be used? Does Google internal distro as some analysts say?

The answer to that question is difficult to answer, because despite leaks that often appear on those details on all types of technology companies, has never been officially confirmed that Google be given its own Linux distribution.


Some might assume that Chromium OS / Chrome OS, the operating system based on Linux, would be the choice in this case, but her condition is still preliminary and probably not in Google as recommended for production environments to their own employees.

And that's where some speak of Goobuntu, an unofficial Linux distribution that would be based on a Long Term Support edition of Ubuntu and Google have tailored to your own needs.

Both Google and Mark Shuttleworth have spoken on several occasions that Goobuntu exists and is used internally in the offices of Google, but as Shuttleworth himself said in that post in early 2006, it is likely that there are also other versions "Googleadas" distros like Red Hat or Debian:

Google uses lots of Linux internally, I imagine they also have their own versions of Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, perhaps even Gentoo and of course Ubuntu. So don’t read too much into their use of Ubuntu – it’s just part of the picture, and nothing to get overly excited about. The “goobuntu” you may have heard of is just a modified version of Ubuntu. Technically, there’s likely to be a “goobian” and a “goohat” too  . The good news is that the guys there have been good about sending us patches, and we do our best to integrate them into mainstream Ubuntu and push them on to Debian and upstream. 

 So is this distribution that Google encourages its users? And if so, why not let others take advantage of these improvements made by Google itself?