Google Pac-Man Costs the World $120 Million

Man, no wonder this economy seems to be in a permanent slump. The U.S. workforce has the collective attention span of a five-year-old at a toy factory.

When Google’s 30th anniversary playable Pac-Man logo just happened to land on a Friday, we knew it was costing the world money. Hundreds of dollars? A few thousand perhaps? No, not even close. According to a breakdown by The RescueTime Blog, Google Pac-Man cost nearly $120,500,000 in lost work time.

You’ll have to read the full post for the ins and outs of the numbers, but the gist is that Googlers spent 36 seconds more on average last Friday than on previous Fridays. That doesn’t sound like much on its own, but when you multiply it out by hundreds of millions of users, the tally came to nearly 5 million hours down the drain, which the blog multiplied out by $25/hour and came to the $120.5 million figure.

Pac-Man was pretty hungry, and we’ll see if anyone keeps an eye on his appetite now that Google has made him a permanent resident.