Following up on our story about the hilariously absurd use of goats to mow the lawns around Google’s headquarters instead of lawnmowers, we were able to get a comment from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA is okay with letting the goats be goats (eating grass and looking cute), but they have some major concerns about how they’ll be treated in doing these tasks.
Says Amy Cook, an Assistant Manager of Marketing for PETA:
PETA has no problem with letting goats do what goats want to do (e.g., look cute and eat weeds), but we do have concerns about how the goats may be transported, whether they are provided with access to shelter during storms and shade as well as water during hot weather, where they are housed when they aren’t “working,” what kind of veterinary care they receive, and what becomes of old and/or excess goats. PETA has found over and over that whenever animals are used by a business to make money, corners are cut and animals often suffer as a result. And that really gets our goat, if you’ll pardon the pun.
You think Google, with its “don’t be evil” mantra, would be kind to the goats. But then again, they have been cutting food supplies to employees during tough times, so you have to wonder if the goats would be left without an ample supply of water as well. Also, veterinary care seems like one of those goat perks that might be on Google’s cost-cutting checklist.
But you never know. I’m going to reach out to Google for comment.
Update: And here’s the response from Niki Fenwick, a Google representative:
Google takes the wellness of our employees very seriously and we pride ourselves on having a responsive and adaptable culture. The lawn-mowing goats are not, of course, full-time Google employees – but we would certainly respond directly to any concerns about their treatment. I can confirm that during their time in Mountain View, like other Google employees, each goat is entitled to a free organic lunch.
Love me some organic salad, hope the goats do too.
PETA, being irrelevant and stupid since 1981
what happened in 1981?
http://en.wikip..._Spring_monkeys
or
http://www.imdb...81/top-grossing
You decide.
goog before you q
i was born in 1981, but I don’t think it bears any significance to PETA. or does it?
Me too — high five. Clearly we’re the reason.
If it was anyone’s birth, it was Paris Hilton’s.
Your birth year and PETA in 1981 probably have nothing to do with each other unless you mother was a drugged out monkey in a pharmaceutical trial during the day and well a “love monkey” for her jailers during the evening…
James Senior, Jr?
James Senior II or
my favorite,
Senior Khan the Second, Lord Death and Desecrator!
Anakin was taken…sorry
REMINDER: These are the same people who want to milk humans instead of cows.
I saw British TV about women still breastfeeding their nine year olds. I’m SORRY but if you think it’s so wonderful ladies, hire a poolboy.
(these daughters had a name for each breast, and they especially recalled the name of the one that produced more).
I guess I have to date another alcoholic……….
Beer has been preparing hopeless people for sex since 800 A.D. Don’t you feel PETA has very short track record and is no fun on Saturday night in Reno?
As contractors do the goats have workers compensation and industrial insurance policy.?
What about the poor illegals that the goats took the place of????
Illegal goat migration! Close teh borders now!
tighten the security!
No, being a contractor doesn’t entitle you to anything, except a license, issued to the state at a cost of $100/month.
As for the “illegals,” can you imagine a pudgy pink faced whiteboy goatherding? He wouldn’t know which the grass goes in and which side the crap comes out! Hell, not one of these comments, including the girl who claims to have raised goats, betrays any familiarity with goats, whatsoever.
On a steep slope, a single goat can clear in one day what a team of 10 weed wacking wankers clear in a week. Almost silently, and almost fumelessly. Goat shit is like clumping potting soil. It comes out as balls the size of ball bearings. You have worse stuff in your bathtub drain. It’s a far cry from cow dung. In any case it’s a non-issue, because all dogs love the taste of goat crap. Not as much as they love horse crap, but they call them road apples for a reason. You don’t have to spend a lifetime on a ranch to know that.
Comment #1 is spot on. PETA’s comments are almost as stupid as the idiots who compare the CH emissions of goats to gas engines. Both groups should have their heads bashed like baby fur seals for crimes against intelligence. They want them to be forced to take breaks from what? Eternal lunch? There is a genuine concern here, but that ain’t it. The real concern is how Google grows it’s lawn. If I were the chivo herder, I’d want to know how many tons of petro-fertilizers, gopher bait and malathion have been dumped on the lawns.
Even worse is the problem of not being even. Goats don’t mow like sheep, and prefer bushes and leaves and flowers to grass, as do deer. Even horses do a better job. So you’ll get spotty lumpy lawns. Not exactly good for putting practice.
Peta and green google are as phony as it gets. Google consumes large quantities of nuclear generated power, but hey, they have goats! The result of green greed will be a brown planet, gore must go!
I suppose you’d prefer coal-generated power? Nuclear is the future, and media fearmongering is delaying the adoption of what more civilized nations recognize to be the next step in the power generation needs of an exceedingly overcrowded planet.
We have the Snake/Columbia River and DAMS!
Salmon need to adapt and learn how to walk anyway. A little more Hanford waste and we’ve saved them.
Thanks for the Friday evening fun story.
I am sure they will have access to the efficient algorithms to access water, food, education and above all data.. oh boy.. they may invent something in that 20%..
I think each goat has 1000 stock options and gets $1000/month towards rent. No medical, though.
hahah if they have proper facilities well goats are doing what they do best…..animals i dont think have the right to go to a doctor if they cant be eaten then they should be given everything for free they should go scavenge for food themselves : ) no shelter either we should impact there lives they should find shelter themselves like they did in the “wild”
MG I am holding you to that goat interview. Where’s our interview with one of the goats! Us Tech Crunch fans want the REAL story!
I’m seriously going to work on that.
Access to shelter during storms? How many storms EVER come through Mountain View, CA? I know it gets a little more adverse weather than So Cal…but storms? Really?
you know, Google need to provide umbrella for goat. It is raining today in mountain view. We don’t want the goat get a fever.
or start a new strain of goat flu
Yeah that adequate shelter thing threw me wrong too. I mean, us humans still have to walk through the desert/rain/snow to get to work… wtf do goats do? Run under a tree? Great, let them run under a tree. Problem solved. And if a goat herder wants alive goats at the end of the day you bet there’ll be sufficient water for them.
WOW, so they want housing and transportation for animals.
i think they should be given 20% of their time for a lawn of their choosing
And of course do not forget that the goats need hot-tubs, personal masseurs, Cristal and Chardonnay.
Come on… PETA? Seriously? Can’t believe they spill paint on people wearing fur: people wore fur since the dawn of friggin’ time.
PETA = People Expecting Total Amusement
Anyone have any better ideas?
It’s People Eating Tasty Animals.
PETA is a bunch of fucking idiots. I know it, you know it and the whole fucking world knows it!!
How about if PETA gives everyone a fucking break. It’s a fucking GOAT!! It’s grass!!!
Are you out in the mountains scouring for goats that maybe can’t find a tree to go under when it rains?
That goat is alot fucking smarter than the brightest at PETA!!
Get a life, Get a job and stop living off donations from people you con into believing that people are on the same level as goats!
+1. LOL
+8. I am down on the floor laughing
+1 Cartman
The goats are contractors, they don’t get 20% time or perks. PETA missed this exploitation of the goats by them being hired through a goat staffing agency instead of directly by G.
Slow news day?
“PETA has found over and over that whenever….”
in this context, whenever sorta implies always. So they find that anytime animals are use, corners are cut?
BTW, wonder if they goats will get special color coded menu’s in the cafeteria?
Aren’t goats colorblind?
Then they won’t feel your avatar stands out from the rest of the page, will they?
Goat marketing’s a bitch.
seriously MG, you reached for a comment from PETA because some goats were grazing? your research just reached new levels
I agree…this is the most ridiculous story (and followup) I’ve read at a “serious” blog in years. Goats grazing in a field instead of lawnmowers? Good for Google. Contacting PETA for a comment? Shame on TechCrunch.
Oh come on people! Most of Tech Crunch is serious stories still. Get a sense of humor. it is “casual Friday” after all.
Nowadays, any news, even goat news is news at Techcrunch! wow!
Brin & Page are buddies with Al Gore, the new age religious greenie & scaremonger global warming doomsayers of modern day, so there is no surprise , to find that goats are being used to mow the lawns around Google’s headquarters instead of lawnmowers.
Honestly, it’s a little ridiculous to pay people to use cutting machines to keep grasses between 1″ – 4″ on an unused piece of land twice a month to begin with.
There are starving animals in the world, here feed yourselves on our semidecorative herbivore brunchfest. Problem solved, everyone happy, conservatives bitchy and paranoid as usual.
You guys are funny. Goats are awesome green solutions to foliage control. 40 goats can munch down an acre of weeds a day. I wanted to do it this time last year prior to a landscaping job, but alas all the goats that are rentable for just this (they drop off and pick up) were booked solid.
They are also the ultimate brown solution – you will spend a few hours picking their doodie out of your shoes, or from between your toes (for you flip flop wearers).
You guys are funny. Goats are awesome green solutions to foliage control. 40 goats can munch down an acre of weeds a day. I wanted to do it this time last year prior to a landscaping job, but alas all the goats that are rentable for just this (they drop off and pick up) were booked solid.
All great ideas are at first absurd. So this could be one.
Tim, you are right and wrong. You are right that it is a great idea, but wrong that it’s new. People have used goats this way for at least a few thousand years already. In Southern Calif., they are used to clear the vegetation to create firebreak, as mandated by law. As I already posted, they are more thorough and efficient than weed wackers and less expensive.
Yes. We must protect the wild animals from the extreme weather conditions of Mountain View.
70 F with 0 humidity can be a harsh living environment for domesticated animals…. Oh wait you’re right.
Goats are domesticated, Mike. I hope you aren’t reproducing.
Googoats on twitter: chew, chew, swallow, poo
CLIMATE CHANGE STUPIDITY
I am pretty certain that the goats are worse for co2 they emit then just kill and eat the goats now and use a regular lawn mower, compared to the CO2 emissions of the goats for the rest of their lifes….
They should cook and eat the under performing ones. Roasted over camp fire one, i’d say. Here is a flickr photo of some goat (i think) I bought in Africa. It was good but it had not been eating Google tech grass.
http://www.flic...N00/3481631986/
I like that idea – the ultimate penalty for underperformance.
I didn’t find this initiative absurd in the slightest. A little unorthodox for a global corporation perhaps. I grew up on a farm with goats. We used to take them into the front yard and have them “mow the grass” for us all the time.
MG, I must be reading this wrong. You’re not actually complaining about this… are you? Let me see..noisy, polluting machines versus quiet chewing and some baa-ing from happy goats, along with fertilizer that goes right back into the soil as God intended. Yes, the commercial landscape service probably lost out to goats – that’s the nature (sorry) of competition.
And “hilariously absurd” use of goats? What are goats (besides eating) supposedly used for? Pets? These guys eat everything – poison oak, blackberries, even choice turf – you name it, they’ll eat it, and turn it into fertilizer.
I’m no wacko environmentalist, just someone who believes that for most of America, this makes perfect sense, and I applaud Google for being smart about it’s resources – and I’m not a stockholder, but maybe I’ll consider it!
and, it must be a slow news day if this makes it to TechCrunch!
Renting goats is only absurd in Mountain View. It’s quite normal here in Oregon. Our local utility company (EWEB) uses goats to clear the brush and blackberries surrounding a canal near where I live. It’s quite a site to see 500 goats crowding the waterways. Where are all the people claiming we’re outsourcing to China & India? Goats are the next victim of job-theft claims.
Tech Crunch is suppose to be about tech, who gives a flying saucer whether Google uses goats. And if i had my way the people from PUTZ oh i mean PETA would be picking up the shit after them. Until Al gore invents a Lawn mower that runs on goat shit and is remote controlled by a Apple Computer, shut up about this crap and write something Techy……
Have they actually measured the carbon footprint of trucking 200 goats to Google? Is it actually less than running a few lawnmowers every once in a while?
yeah actually. trucking them in must use more gas than the mowers.
“yeah, trucking them in must use more bs…” WTF? What are you, like 12? That comment gives me the same heebee geebees I got when my high school English teacher made us watch a movie about gang bangers in NY who sing alto and piroutte with quaint little jack knives.
Instead of assuming anything, why don’t you use your Tech Crunch super powers to FIND OUT. Are they even trucking them in at all? Whose to say a bare foot 10 year girl (perfect for a mental 12 year old boy) won’t be walking the herd up with a curved walking stick and bowl of curds and whey? Talk about f&ing wholesome.
Are you sure this is not just a way of Google getting into the dairy business? I won’t be surprise if they come out in a few months with Google Milk! as a product you can buy in supermarkets
“hilariously absurd use of goats to mow the lawns”
What is so hilarious about this? You city slickers do realize that that is essentially what goats do? You know: Field/lawn = grass.
Wow
I wonder if google is planning to milk the goats and what kind of revenue they are expecting next quarter from this? I am confident they will buy some adwords to market the goat products as well? Does anyone have insight into the projected numbers?
Can i track the goats on Google maps or Google Earth yet……..? Anyone know!
I just want make sure there not being mistreated…
They are called “redneck lawn mowers”, and:
1) they are quite common
2) they are animals….just what is PETA thinking these same animals did for shelter back in, oh, say the 1800’s?
3) There is a hill near Yahoo!’s campus where they have the same thing. Just do a Flickr search on “yahoo goats”
Being that I worked in Mountain View for years and on the campus that Google is going to use for the goats, I have to say “HELLO, THIS IS CALIFORNIA WE ARE TALKING ABOUT”. We typically don’t get rain from May until October/November. A storm in summertime is really rare.
While I understand many of Peta’s concerns about ethical treatment of animals, in this case Peta’s concerns made me shake my head. I know people who run very ethical goat dairies, but they don’t have a use for the older ones who are not good milk producers or male goats. I know that these goats get placed with herders that rent them out to clear land.
I’d assume that the goats that would be rented out to Google most likely would be ones that have gotten a new lease on life, to do what they like to do, rather than end up in the food chain.
it rained today.
So how long before there is Goat cheese and Goat cutlets along with kid meat? Maybe PETA can be invited to supervise the kosher slautering of goats after they eat organic [and only organic] grass around Google?!
You can’t make a kosher cut of goat, can you? Read the Bible, if only for the really wacky names and talk of FORNICATION.
(Fornincation is what happens if you lust too hard and skip the Sears catalog)!
I hope Google tests the ground and grass to see the pesticide and herbicide residues present on its lawns before getting these goats munch the grass. Remember they will end up on your table as lamb curry and mutton biriyani.
Unlike mountain slopes of Milpitas, Morgan Hill and other Silicon Valley areas, office and home loans have been applied with various chemicals to get rid of weeds and make these lawns look prestine. I hope PETA also look into this issue before Google goes overboard to be noble and green!
Lamb and mutton from goats? What?
I hope PETA keep their meddling selves out of it and waste their time/money on something else. Actually, they’ll probably just produce another obscene marketing campaign. Or try to indoctrinate us with their ridiculous views in another classic publication like this: http://www.cons..._mommykills.pdf
Personally, I’d get a “kick” out of seeing 200 goats outside my window – but where are the herding dogs, and what type of methane will be dumped and then recycled of course, after this activity? Perhaps the Landscape crew has the swine flu? How many jobs are lost as a result? How will the goats be transferred back and forth? I think this is a chance for a new Click Clack Moo book where the goats go on strike at Google.
LOL That would be great! Click Clack Moo is my all time favorite book. Pigs cause a flu, what’s Google to do? I’d love to see Google Goats On Strike.
Guess tech crunch can’t take the heat, they got rid of one of my comments….. If you going to put stupid stuff up your going get stuff like this…. I am still waiting for my Google gadget code named “Follow our Goats” LOL
goat curry
these people are nuts.
Not related to goats but to PETA. I believe there is a huge problem with overfishing but, what does PETS propose? We should call fish “sea kittens”. I kid you not.
http://www.peta...rg/sea_kittens/
How many people are Meat Eaters here? Almost All i guess? WTF… people who eat meat everyday, talking of sunshine, shade, docs for goats… huh
What exactly is your point Linda? Meat-eaters can’t have compassion for animals?
I can sends albanian mountain goats to googel. they are very tasty.
goats taste like they smell. and they all smell like a turd
what is that turd? do you eat it daily everyday? it is tasty??
Look closely at their avatar. They are screaming the praises of Albanian goat turd!
I think you should do better research. Goats are brought in all the time go clear out hillsides of brush. There us nothing hilarious about it. And PETA I’m curious what goats did for “shelter” waaaaaaay back in the day.
PETA is full of wackos. Why pay any attention to them?
I think google is doing the right thing. As far as treating the goats properly, I have to say they will probably treat them just fine, how could they not, goats are cool.
Someone mentioned efficient algorithms to assess the goats’ needs for food, water, etc.
I’m sure Wolfram Alpha will be able to handle that.
it’s funny how companies like healing Hooves – http://healinghooves.com/ – have been offering this service for years, but it only gets PETA attention when there’s a press release in it for them.
What the… it’s California Grazing that is handling the goats, not Google.
You don’t have to worry about Google “being kind to goats”. You have to worry about California Grazing.
Sheesh! Why do I read this stuff.
Com’on Techcrunch, show some added value…
Where’s the exclusive interview of the newly hired Google staff? I thought you guys had connections..
We want an interview or I stop reading Techcrunch!
I’m usually the first one to jump on the “PETA is a truckload of raging wackos” bandwagon, but I have to say – the statement from PETA was sensible, reasonable, and even a little bit funny.
My question now is: who is Amy Cook and what did she do with PETA?!?!?