By Angela Beswick
More than four million hours were spent playing Pac-Man on Friday’s Google page.
Productivity blog RescueTime claims the average Google user spent 36 seconds more, on average, than any other Friday.
The fully play-able version of the game replaced Google’s logo to mark the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man.
“Google’s Pac-Man logo just ruined millions of dollars in productivity,” read one post on Twitter.
During the time the app was sitting on Google’s page, users spent a combined total of 4,819,352 hours playing the iconic game – in addition to the 33.6 million hours of attention Google search receives each day.
RescueTime calculated the productivity dollar-loss, assuming the average Google user has a cost of USD$25 per hour.
They came to a figure of USD$120,483,800 in lost revenue.
For that same cost, RescueTime suggests, you could hire all 19,835 Google employees - from founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin down to their janitors - for six weeks.
If all of the Pac-Man players earned the same as the average Google employee, they earned a combined wage of USD$298,803,988.
The layout of Pac-Man's traditional maze, adapted to incorporate the word Google, is now a full-time feature on the site.
3 News