You must recall that this Friday past Google put Pac-Man into their logo. It was fun, and with an unlimited number of plays and the ability to game with a friend it was a hit across the world.
After all, why work when you can play Pac-Man, right? Just how much time was spent that day on something so small and trivial was anyone’s guess. That remained true until someone with access to some solid data decided to do the math.
According to RescueTime, the average Google.com user spent some 36 seconds longer than normal on Google this past Friday. Now, the average Google user racks up some 4.5 minutes a day on Google executing searches, so the total average percent rise was only 6.67%. Not too much.
But when that rise in total time is aggregated all around the world, the magnitude of Google and their little game comes to light. Google has some 500 million daily unique visitors, at least according to WolframAlpha. Assume that each one of those is an average user, thus spending the average amount of time on Google and therefore racking up that extra 36 seconds, and you can calcuate that Google Pac-Man burned some 4,819,352 hours last Friday.
Now that number is high for any number of reasons. Firstly Google’s unique daily visitor count is in no way representative of its average user base; many of those visitors are casual once search a week people. Secondly, not everyone actually managed to play Pac-Man, and any number of factors could have contributed to the bump in Friday usership.
Still, the number is in the millions of hours, possibly around two. Once you factor in the above objections, a 60% or so reduction seems fair. Even with two million consumed hours in a single day, it’s hard not to think that Google Pac-Man became a top five most played game literally overnight, until the next day.
If you want, you can still play Google Pac-Man if you know where to look.
one of our readers pointed out he truly believes that Google did this as a test for something and simply wouldn’t waste 5 million hours of possible conversions (or whatever) without an endgame. I have to say that I bet he’s right, although neither him nor I have any evidence of that.
Yeah, people use Google only at their work
This move was pure genius. It made Google a destination for a day, not just a conduit. It made people feel good about Google, a very, very important aspect of marketing for a company whose every move is publicly scrutinized and often attacked with as much of a base in emotion as in reason.
Google Space Invaders next!
LOL, I know I sat there all day playing it!
Lou
http://www.complete-anonymity.at.tc
Those estimates are the total number of hours people spent on Google, but not ‘productive’ hours. Does playing a game for 2 minutes reduce somebody’s productivity? I’m not convinced it does. A lot of the work I do requires a lot of ‘brainpower’, and that’s the limiting factor in the day, not time. :P I think that will hold true for a lot of people.
I spent more time playing urban terror than the 15 seconds I dedicate to ‘see’ how the game was. It’s like saying that out of 4 people, 1 is chinese…