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Google posted to the official company blog today that this spring, the company has begun using goats instead of lawn mowers to maintain the fields of their Mountain View headquarters. The idea is that this is a low-carbon approach.
"Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we’re not ‘kidding’)," explains Dan Hoffman on the Google Blog. "A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers."
If this wasn’t a strange enough story, evidently Yahoo has already been doing this too. On Twitter, Yahoo tweeted at Google saying, "They like our grass too," with a link to a photo on Flickr of goats grazing on Yahoo properties. This photo was uploaded two years ago.
"Once or twice a year, a large herd of goats can be seen just past our parking garage in Sunnyvale, grazing happily on the tall grasses of the hill (cough – landfill – cough) beyond," says Yahoo in the caption. "We have a special fondness for the goats and are always sad to see them go (which, based on their voracity, happens much faster than you’d imagine)."
Yahoo may not have Google beat in the search game, but they are certainly ahead of the game in goat mowing. It’s pretty interesting. We’ve been covering the search industry for years, and this is the first I’ve heard of any goats.
At first I thought you were just late on the Google April fools joke. LOL
Did you see you can get Google profile business cards free? The first 10,000 get a set free, just look on your Google profile, if the offer still exists you will see link and you have to be logged in.
You can see it on mine here and if you are logged into the account you use for Google Friend Connect it will show the link at the top.
http://www.google.com/profiles/chrislang
Really free too, shipping and all and this is not a late April Fools day joke either.
Hope you make it in time.
Yeah, I think the April Fool’s thing ran through a lot of people’s minds. The business card thing is interesting. I actually posted about the other day too.
How about some props to the guy who figured out he can RENT GOATS and make money from Goog and Yahoo! – That’s the genius here!
are we all trying to fool tha blog’s owner………
its really a nice thing
Check out this visual:
http://www.semwisdom.com/blog/google-hiring-goats
Actually, I’m amazed with this article. I thought this was a joke! Well, at least they don’t forget their responsibility to mother earth.
Isn’t it true that Green House Gases increaase with the methane emitted from goats. There was an article that mentioned that cattle (cows, goats) all emit methane which increases green house gases. Its a tough call. Though I do prefer goats to noisy mowers!! Maybe cows next – and google employees can spend their lunch hour milking the cows- which can be used in their cafeteria. No offense to google or yahoo though!!