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Images captured by Google’s Street View car on a dusty road in Botswana appear to show the camera vehicle knocking over a donkey, then driving away. Unconfirmed reports claim the driver was heard laughing about it, too.
The find has caused enough online controversy to force Google into issuing a statement about the donkey’s health, with the search giant saying: “Our Street View teams take the safety of people and donkeys very seriously. A review of our imagery confirms that we did not cause any harm to the donkey.”
People who’ve spent more than two seconds looking at the photos have come up with the rational explanation that the donkey was rolling in the dust when the camera car came along, forcing it to get up and run away. Watching these events happen in the wrong order might indeed make it look like Google mowed the animal down in order to sell the meat to Tesco. [The Register]
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Nearly spat my tea out when I read that last line!
Ha! Meat, Tesco, i see what you did there! +1 to The Lord High Sir Gary of Cutlack!
Hold on, the Google car is taking pictures of a ‘dusty road’ otherwise known as a track in Botswana…?
2 million people, 70% Kalahari desert, 120,000 people with internet access, around 10% of population have cars…..way to go Google!
“You might have seen a housefly, may be even a superfly, but I bet you ain’t never seen a donkey fly”
The trees in the smaller picture are about 20m down the track in the larger picture. so in order to take that first shot, they would have then needed to reverse back up the road to mow it down. which is certainly possible, thus they clearly ran over the donkey. case closed.
I drove through Botswana a few years ago and all I remember about the road conditions are the bloody donkeys. They love just standing in the middle of the road and ignore your horn – the Google car probably had to wait for the stupid animal to finish its dust bath and walk off… And the hitch-hikers are just weird: http://www.camelworld.com/images/PICT1907.JPG
In this case I assume “unconfirmed reports” is code for made up stories?
Or was there a way for others to hear the driver that I’m not aware of?
There was another donkey standing around off camera who came to the UK to report this story to Gary personally. I’m sure he wouldn’t make this up, this is Giz UK not US, we don’t go in for senseless hyperbole round these parts.
“Google mowed the animal down in order to sell the meat to Tesco.”
And you thought Google sold advertisements!
Wandering donkeys are a HUGE problem in Botswana. I rolled my car while trying to avoid a Mid Road Donkey Conference back in 2009. At least you can see elephants and giraffes wandering onto the road from a mile off – donkeys (and cows to an extent) can blend in and tend to wander onto the road as a result of their low intelligence.
*and another thing*
That’s the road leading into Khutse; one of Botswana’s hidden gems. It kinda saddens me that isolated places like this are being “street viewed” by Google now. It’s a shame they even flattened to road in the first place, I remember when it was just very deep sand!
I’m sure the people of Khutse are not sad that it is easier to get food and medicines into/out of their town.
Khutse is a Game Reserve, not a town – nobody lives there except for lions, jackals and deer etc.
Oh my!
I sit corrected.
Is this what they call ‘big data’ then?
This is what you get from being a dumb-ass American and ass-uming that everyone drives on the right…
I dont care if its not true, everything is true on the internet. Murdering swine!!!! Down with everything!