Frankly, I thought the figure will be higher (HE tweet), closer to $500m. Given the amount of traffic Google receives a day, and the twitter buzz surrounding the Pac-Man homage, ‘losing’ just $120m is fine. Also, bare in mind that Friday is a non-working day in Israel, so we helped, by like $10.
Now, to the math:
On average, a user spends 4:30 minutes per day on Google.com, spread across 22 pages, give or take a page. Each search you perform is over in ~12sec (270/22). Seems like nothing, but next time you search, start the clock – 12sec is a lot of time.
On Friday, May 23rd, the average user spent an additional 36sec on Google.com, playing Pac-Man of course. Assuming Google.com has over 500 million visitors a day (Wolfram-Alpha), then the Pac-Man players have consumed almost 4,820,000 hours of play (!), and, at a $25/hour rate = $120, 483,800 per day. Oh, and if all the Pac-Man players had Google employees’ benefits (higher hour rate of course), the cost leaps to $298,803,988.
In case you missed the homage, or just want to play (and burn more $$), Google has created a permanent page: google.com/pacman. Enjoy 🙂
