In kind of an offbeat story this weekend, Google announced on Friday that the company has contracted California Grazing, a goat herding company, in an effort to make their pastures … and their carbon emissions, a bit greener. Instead of using a lawnmower crew to take care of the brush and weeds growing outside of their Mountain View based headquarters, Google is going au-natural and responsible with a new herd of 200 goats and one border collie.
The goats will spend about a week at Google, work their way through the weeds, and then fertilize the Googleplex property with fresh goat droppings, for about the same cost that it takes to contract a landscaping and bush hogging crew, their gasoline, and carbon emissions.
Google’s Dan Hoffman, Director Real Estate and Workplace Services, adds on the Google Blog “It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.”
On a side note, Google was not the first search engine to hire Goats, as Yahoo started the practice back in 2007.
