Aussie Google employee asks for a monorail, Google buys monorail cars

When you’ve got as much money as Google, you can afford to occasionally look at requests put in by your employees (even the joke ones) and say “eh, why not?” Take the ticket put in by Australian site reliability engineer Paul Cowan, for instance.

Cowan, who works in the internet giant’s Sydney office, asked that the company buy and install the recently decommissioned Sydney Monorail. The transport system, which ran for 25 years, is currently in the process of being dismantled.

As Cowan explains to the Syndey Morning Herald: “At the time, Google Australia had spread from one office building in Pyrmont to two, and there were rumours of a third coming soon, so this idiot suggested that maybe Google should buy the monorail and install it between the three buildings in a loop, because we’re lazy and besides how cool would it be to have a monorail.”

Rather than taking over the whole thing, Google bought two monorail cars, which it plans to use as meeting rooms. According to the Australian newspaper, it cost Google around AUS$250 000 to transport and install the carriages.

When the monorail meeting rooms are complete, they will reportedly be equipped with aircon and TV screens.

Image: Hpeterswald (via Wikimedia Commons).