Most people’s online lives are heavily influenced by Google. Not only are they a search engine, Google has grown into the advertising field with adwords and adsense, in addition to a full suite of communication tools such as gmail, google talk and more recently into operating systems (google android) and social networking with Google+.
Google’s corporate motto is ‘Don’t be evil’ which loosely means that you can make money without doing evil. Something they have kept in mind since they were first established in 1998 by Stanford Students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Google certainly has a different corporate structure in comparison to other large corporations for example:
Google has a dog policy!
Google allows employees to bring their dogs to work. They have a company ‘top dog’ names Yoshka and a written dog policy
”Google’s affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but we’re a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out. For more on this, see our Dog Policy.”
While here’s an excerpt from the extended dog policy:
” The presence of dogs at Google has been a unique, and to some a treasured part of our workplace culture. Dogs can be a valued and important part of employee’s lives and their ability to keep a dog in their workplace may enhance the quality of their work life.”
Google’s first ever tweet:
On 26th Februrary 2009, Google left their first ever tweet “I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010.”. The message reveals “I’m feeling lucky.” It’s as geeky as Google could get, as it’s a phrase often found on their homepage.
Google Rents Goats
Near Google’s HQ there are fields which previously were mowed in the conventional way using a lawn mower. Google came up with the low carbon alternative:
“We have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats,” Google posted in their blog.
A herder brings approximately 200 goats to the head quarters for a week so that they can eat the grass and fertilize the soil.