Google’s Pac-Man tribute sapped productivity

Here’s something we all already knew: People like to waste time on the internet while they’re at work. It’s possible that you’re doing it right now. In a weird way, I am doing this very thing right now.

Remember the tribute to Pac-Man Google had up the other day? RescueTime, a company which produces productivity software, thinks they know about how much of the world’s time was taken up by the delightful diversion the engineers at Google created. Based on data collected from 11,000 of their users, RescueTime has estimated approximately 4.82 million man-hours were wasted. Wow.

There’s a breakdown of how they came to this conclusion on RescueTime’s blog, which is a decent read. But that’s a hell of a lot of time burnt on something so simple. Behold the power of the internet in its most raw form!

The Tragic Cost of Google Pac-Man – 4.82 million hours [RescueTime via PC World]