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Pac-Man singlehandedly destroys US economy (how's that for sensationalist)

By Rain Noe - May 26, 2010

in Design Business

Like many other websites, we posted a link to Google's homepage last Friday when, for one day only, they had a free Pac-Man applet at the top of the page. It has since become so popular that Google is offering it full-time here.

Now, party-pooping analysts and software at Wolfram Alpha and RescueTime are claiming the one day of fun had a negative impact on the freaking U.S. economy. Here's what they're saying:

- The average user spent 36 seconds MORE on Google.com on Friday.
- Google Pac-Man consumed 4,819,352 hours of time
- $120,483,800 is the dollar tally, if the average Google user has a COST of $25/hr

They have statistics and charts to back all this up, but we're a little disappointed they didn't list the stats we're really interested in: How many dots, total, did Pac-Man consume? How many times did Inky, Pinky, Blinky & Clyde get eaten? Where is Ms. Pac-Man in all of this, and why is she "Ms," are they not married?

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luis

14 years ago

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click the 'insert coin' button twice and you get Ms. Pac-man. FTW
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Pierre

14 years ago

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Ms Pac-Man is there too, just click on insert coins twice and she'll appear ;-) (at least that was the case with the home page version, didn't check it again).
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ksict

14 years ago

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At that rate, it would take 320 years for the time "wasted" to equal the national debt. If only Congress wasted our money that slowly...
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thecurlyone

14 years ago

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Did Microsoft not agree to a licensing deal with Wolfram Alpha for its Bing search engine a little while ago?

Imagine it trying to criticise Google but, in typical Microsoft fashion, actually increasing their publicity!
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Ronnje

14 years ago

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Haha! Awesome. Anyway, ANALysts are similar to many attorneys; their work mostly only serves their own personal interests (and wallets).

BTW, I hate Pac-Man--I'm not an ambi-turner.
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