Google's PacMan doodle cost the world Rs 570 cr

Animated Google logo designed to mark PacMan's 30th birthday caused millions of dollars in lost productivity.

The launch of Google's animated PacMan doodle last Friday (see pic) led to almost five million wasted hours and cost the economy around $120 million (Rs 570 crore), according to Tony Wright, founder of Rescue Time, a tool that enables businesses to measure how time and attention is being spent.



He estimated that Google had around 505 million unique users on the day the PacMan Google Doodle went live, and that the game consumed 4,819,352 hours of employee time, costing the economy an estimated $120,483,800.

Internet users were delighted to discover the animated PacMan doodle on Google's home page last Friday. The doodle, which marked the 30th anniversary of PacMan's release, was Google's first interactive logo. Web users could play the game by clicking "Insert coin".

The game remained online for 48 hours before the Google doodle reverted to the usual logo.

Waste more time at www.google.com/pacman