While Google Pac-Man has moved on to its permanent home at google.com/pacman, the interactive doodle lived on the Google homepage for a time on May 21st and 22nd.

As soon as it became apparent that absolutely everyone was addicted to playing a dinky little Google doodle version of the game, rumblings began about lost productivity. IT dudes emailed tech blogs about banning Google because it was proving to be too much fun. Mostly no one noticed because they were playing Pac-Man on Google. But according to the BBC, a software firm calculated the potential time and money lost when the game was live on Google’s homepage.

Rescue Time, the software firm that conducted the studies, said that on the days in question, 11,000 of their users spent far longer on the Google home page than is standard:

On a typical day, it suggests, most people conduct about 22 searches on the Google page, each one lasting about 11 seconds.

Putting Pac-Man on the page boosted that time by an average of about 36 seconds, the firm said based on the browsing habits of 11,000 Rescue Time users…

Extrapolating this up across the 504 million unique users who visit the main Google page day-to-day, this represents an increase of 4.8 million hours – equal to about 549 years.

The firm further extrapolated the financial cost of the cumulative seconds of lost productivity playing Google Pac-Man. Assuming workers were paid at a rate of $20 an hour, Rescue Time said the game could have cost companies $120m, enough to cover the entire payroll of Google for six weeks.

Software firm calculates time/money burned by Google Pac-Man homepage is a post from: The Inquisitr

You know how Google put a Pac-Man doodle on the homepage Friday and like no one got anything done because it was super fun to play with?

Apparently everyone dug the feature pretty hard because Google blogged that they’re keeping the interactive doodle:

We’ve been overwhelmed — but not surprised — by the success of our 30th anniversary PAC-MAN doodle. Due to popular demand, we’re making the game permanently available atwww.google.com/pacman.

Thanks to NAMCO for helping to make this wonderful collaboration happen. Enjoy!

Google introduced the popular doodle Friday in honor of Pac-Man‘s 30th birthday. The game was introduced in 1980, and has remained a big part of gaming culture ever since. (80s kids might remember the ensuing cartoons and cereals tied to the game’s popularity.) Twitter and tech blogs lit up at the dinky Google simulator this weekend, and although you can play Pac-Man numerous places on the web, the in-browser method really seems to have struck a chord. Are you moving your bookmarks?

Internet adopts Google Pac-Man forever is a post from: The Inquisitr

As Chris posted this morning, many of us in the 25-40 year old bracket woke up this morning, fired up Google, hit “insert coin” and haven’t done much since.

In case you missed it, the Google Doodle this morning is of Pac-Man. Oh, cute, you might say. No- effing awesome. Not only is the Google Doodle of Pac-Man, there’s a game embedded in the logo that you can play and there’s even a Ms. Pac-Man 2 player version. You can go play Pac-Man lots of places on the internet, but there’s something really compelling about it being right there, by itself, as a surprise and not a lame embedded iGoogle window, right there on your Google. It’s sort of addictive. I’ve actually been “researching for my post” for the last hour and twenty minutes.

So of course, IT heads all over the country have started banninating Google. Well, it’s just one guy who emailed in to CNET to douchefully say he “had no choice but to delete Google” at his workplace, but from there we can extrapolate that on this gorgeous and sunny Friday, managers noticing a drop in productivity are not pleased with Google and are probably getting all on people’s asses for just trying to play five minutes of Pac-Man.

Here’s the email from Emir Shabashvili, a “computer manager” in Miami who ruined all his co-workers’ fun:

I am [a] computer manager here at Miami-Dade County. Today I [started] receiving calls from users. They were concerned with [the] unusual behavior of [the] Google home page–many of them have Google as [their] home page, along with the County page. [We're used] to Google celebrating this and that and placing some pictures on the home page, but today it was the annoying sound of [Pac-Man]. Recreational games are banned by county regulations, so I had no choice but [to] delete Google as one of [the] home page tabs on users’ PCs. I wonder how many Google home pages disappeared today all over the globe?

We can probably also safely extrapolate that these are the same people who call personnel all concerned that the soda machine is dispensing free Fanta again. But if Google searches are any indication, though, bean counters and middle managers have their work cut out for them this morning. Searches for Tetris (or “play Tetris online”), Galaga, Frogger and ostensibly Dig Dug and Space Invaders are totally up by like a million percent this morning.

Quit playing Google Pac Man and get back to work, everyone! is a post from: The Inquisitr