Last weekend the Internet was treated with a fun little game called Pac-Man.  The guys and gals at Google HQ thought it’d be fun to turn the Google logo into a full-fledged game of Pac-Man to celebrate the game’s 30th anniversary.  This was the real deal–the game included all 256 levels, the ghosts, the fruits, the wakka wakka sound, and the kill screen in the final level.  There was even an “insert coin” button in the place of “I’m Feeling Lucky” that when pressed once started the game, and when pressed a second time introduced Ms. Pac-man and allowed for a 2-player mode (played with the WASD keys).  And check out what the playable doodle did to productivity in America on the Friday it was introduced (according to RescueTime Blog): the average user spent 36 more seconds on Google.com; the game consumed 4,819,352 hours of time; $120,483,800 in lost productivity.  “For that same cost, you could hire all 19,835 Google employees, from [founders] Larry and Sergey down to their janitors, and get 6 weeks of their time.”  Now that’s impressive (and scary).

And with all that said I bring good news!  Although the Pac-Man Google doodle was taken down after the weekend, the game has not been wiped from Google’s server.  Head over to google.com/pacman to play whenever you want!  But try to get your work done first, hm?  Aw, who am I kidding?  Get your wakka wakka action on right now!

[Via CNET; RescueTimeBlog]