Google recently celebrated the classic arcade game Pac-Man when it featured a playable version of the game on its homepage as its logo. Google’s custom logos are famous for their inventiveness and always have a special meaning behind them, but this one had an unexpected impact on the US economy.
Researchers have estimated that the playable logo, which allowed visitors to Google on Friday 21st May to play Pac-Man, cost US businesses in the region of 4.82 million man hours as employees whiled their day away reliving their childhood in a bid to pop one more pill and chase some ghosts.
Estimated figure suggest that Google received an additional 4.82 million hours of attention on Pac-Man day than it would usually have received on a Friday, totalling $120,483,800 in lost wages.
It has been estimated that you would be able to hire all of Google’s staff for six weeks for that figure!
Thankfully for businesses, Pac-Man no longer features on Google’s homepage – but you can still play the game on the permanent page that Google has put up for it here.
