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Google PAC-MAN Cost 4.8M Person-Hours

Posted by kdawson on from the stolen-moments dept.

The folks at Rescue-Time, who make software that helps you (and companies) figure out how you spend your online time, did a modest calculation based on their user base and concluded that Google's playable PAC-MAN doodle cost the world over 4.8 million person-hours of productivity last Friday. "Google PAC-MAN consumed 4,819,352 hours of time (beyond the 33.6M daily man hours of attention that Google Search gets in a given day). $120,483,800 is the dollar tally, if the average Google user has a cost of $25/hr. (note that cost is 1.3 – 2.0 X pay rate). For that same cost, you could hire all 19,835 Google employees, from Larry and Sergey down to their janitors, and get six weeks of their time." Also, Google made the doodle permanent.

8 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Competition by natehoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Still pales in comparison to the average Slashdot Idle story...

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    "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
    1. Re:Competition by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Look, there's nothing wrong with "man". It referred to "human" long before it referred to "male human". Just live with it: the word is man-hours!

      Unfortunately, there's a fair bit of evidence that small differences in wording can have a lot of impact. For example, if little children are asked to draw a picture of a "firefighter" they will be more likely to draw a female than if they are asked to draw a picture of a "fireman." So even if "man" can be used to mean person, subtle human irrationality still has an impact.

  2. In other words by aztektum · · Score: 4, Interesting

    People spent 4.8 million hours enjoying life rather than slaving away for the man :P

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    :: aztek ::
    No sig for you!!
    1. Re:In other words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      What we like about capitalism is that it forces competition which means that, instead of companies doing the bare minimum so they can make a quick buck, they are forced to compete with better goods and services or go out of business. The only way that will continue to happen is if there are government regulations that protect consumers from anti-competitive behavior. The minute you let a group of companies start colluding with each other is when you get 10 different companies make the exact same shitty overpriced TV for the exact same overpriced price.

  3. Re:Yum, numbers are tasty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    start the game on the penultimate level, level 255 - so yo can experience your own kill screen

  4. Nonsense figure by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's all sorts of incorrect presumptions by the original article author, like all the time spent playing Google pac-man was necessarily at work. Like nobody is playing it in their own time.

    Another one is that people would do work if it wasn't for pac-man. Hell I'd just find a different distraction to avoid work if the pac-man game wasn't around.

  5. Re:Slashdot manages that every day by antirelic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unfortunately, the hyper inflated concept of the unflinching, tireless, resolute worker is best left as a relic of the industrial revolution. Never in the course of human history, outside of the industrial revolution, has a human being been expected to produce "something" for 8 straight hours a day, 5 days a week (and for some more than that). Such simple minded focus strips the mind of creativity; creativity which has dramatically advanced and improved the human condition.

    I am a hard core capitalist and stalwart industrialist, but I am also a pragmatist. Non stop, widget production, should be left to the factory worker who needs to follow a standard script. Expecting an IT professional, a researcher, or an engineer to simply keep producing something measurable with each minute of the day shows a complete lack of understanding of your resources. I forget what the name of the study was, but it took three sports teams and show the level of performance improvements over a team that 1) vacationed for a week, thinking about the upcoming game, 2) team that unceasingly trained for the upcoming game, 3) team that sporadically trained for the upcoming game. turns out the vacationing team that spent some time visualizing the upcoming game, produced the greatest results, with the team that trained too hard had the smallest improvements.

    Long story short, expecting factory worker performance from skilled workers, is as foolish as expecting a successful heart transplant surgery from a line backer.

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    20th century Marxism is not progress...
  6. Ok, we brought this up... by jra · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can I just say that I *love* firefighting work, cause it's the last bastion of objective capability over affirmative action?

    That unconscious guy in the burning building doesn't *care* that you're female, and can only drag 150 pounds; he still weighs 200.

    And amazingly enough: the exams recognize this.