Google’s decision to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Pac-Man video game last week by including a playable version on its home page for one day, meant global productivity fell by $120m. Rescue Time, a specialist in time management software, estimates that the average Google user spent 36 more seconds on the Google home page on Friday.

With 504 million unique users visiting the site on Friday, this equates to some 4.82 million hours extra spent on the page. By using an average hourly rate of $25 per hour, Rescue Time calculates the cost to the global econmy as having been almost $120.5 million.

Source: Guardian.co.uk/25.05.2010