I wonder how the Googlers handle this @work. Obviously, in overall, they are a productive bunch, but it makes me wonder upon your comment if the dog friendly groups get as much distracted or not.
It depends. Some people bring their dogs in to work every day. If the dog is not well-behaved and quiet, this can be very annoying. For example, when you're having a meeting about integrating two systems and a fifty pound animal is moving about under the table. If you work near a cafeteria, people will frequently leave their dogs tied up outside, which often precipitates barking, even though both leaving the animal tied up and bringing a barker to work are explicitly against policy. Then there was the time a coworker brought her dog in and there was a seriously enormous (>1 foot diameter) wet spot on the floor where the dog had lain and slobbered all day long.
There are definitely good aspects to having a dog-friendly culture, but it can be trying for us non-owners when some coworkers forget that the comfort of other humans takes priority over that of their pet.
You could answer that question for yourself by reading my comment history. A substantial portion of my last ten comments have positive sentiment, and some of the negative ones are about other negative comments (e.g. The one where some idiot floated the idea that the US will shortly go the way of post-Communist Russia). I daresay if we compare mine to yours I come off as downright cheery, not to mention largely civil.
But it is true that I don't think a piling on of "this is awesome" comments are particularly useful in the average case.
