A GOOGLE homepage doodle posted last week... has cost the world $268 m

[SoCalDem]

or so Google figures:)..it has a permanent home at this site...so bookmark and play at will:)

http://www.news.com.au/technology/counting-the-cost-of-a-google-toy-as-les-paul-guitar-doodle-gets-permanent-home/story-e6frfro0-1226076309469

A GOOGLE homepage doodle posted last week honouring guitar legend Les Paul has cost the world $268 million, despite only setting the internet giant back a mere $15,000, Extreme Tech says. Extreme Tech says the amount covers 10.7 million man-hours in lost productivity, assuming the average Google user earns $25 an hour.

"During the two days that the Les Paul doodle was online, those 740 million visitors, according to analytics from RescueTime, spent 26 seconds more on the Google home page than normal," it said. "740 million times 26 seconds is 5,344,444 hours - and over two days, that's a total of almost 10.7 million man hours spent playing with the Les Paul Google Doodle.

"Assuming the average Google user earns $25/hour, the doodle cost companies around the world $268 million in lost productivity," it said. "It's impossible to predict exactly how many kilowatt hours were used by the Les Paul guitar, but if we posit that the doodle draws 5 watts, and the average visitor spent 26 seconds playing with the doodle, then each visit used 0.000035 kilowatt hours (kWh).

"Over two days, with 1480 million visitors, that's 51,800 kWh. At 10c per kWh, that's a grand total of $5180," the site said. It said Google would have paid a developer to create the Les Paul guitar but this would amount to just "a few hundred dollars".

Due to the overwhelming popularity of the Les Paul doodle, Google have given it a permanent home here.


snip

[aquart]

1. THANK YOU!

[flamingdem]

2. Good, less work more play, weeee nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I'm really glad to hear that!

This was a truly inspired Google and it deserves to be immortalized!

:woohoo:

[Rhiannon12866]

4. Very cool!

Thanks so much for posting this... :applause:

[pipoman]

5. Is it just me

or do others doubt that the average Google user makes $25 per hour?

[SoCalDem]

7. I guess they are averaging a LOT of super-rich in with the rest of us

:rofl:

[MrDiaz]

12. really.

You believe that 25 dollars an hour is super rich?

[pipoman]

15. I doubt the poster does

but there are a lot of hard working people who don't make anywhere near $25. Regionally, there are far more areas of the US with lower cost of living than metro, coastal areas. The lower paid areas/people would require a lot of much higher paid people to bring the average to $25.

[Scuba]

17. John Paulson brought that average way up with his $2.4 M / Hour rate....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x888358



Gotta factor in the Koch brothers doing a search or two as well. They both made about $5.5 billion dollars last year after taxes.

[Scuba]

16. Do you not understand how averaging works?

[SoCalDem]

21. No.. I thought people understood how averaging worked

When the bazillionaires are averaged in with the $8 an hour-ers, the hourly AVERAGE rises :P...hence their $25 hr quoted-rate:)

a $96.00 an hour worker + 4 $1.00 an hr workers AVERAGES to $25 an hour:)

[whopis01]

31. No - that's the average - I am a google user

and you would have to average my hourly pay with someone who made 4 times as much as me to get to $25/hr average. So we are talking about someone making $40/hr. I suppose that you might not consider that super rich - but to someone making $10/hr, it sure as hell seems pretty damn comfortable.

[FreeJoe]

26. Total cost

When calculating the cost of lost productivity, you can't just count direct wages. You need to count the total cost to the company of that person's time. That includes the company side of the FICA taxes, benefits, office costs, and any other costs directly attributable to the supporting that person. When I plan for my team, salaries are slightly less than half of my employee costs.

[Electric Monk]

6. Awesome

[JVS]

8. The pac-man doodle was more addictive

[gauguin57]

10. I agree. I'm still playing the archived pac-man. I was done with Les Paul after an hour.

Now I'm playing with the eclipse.

[Jamastiene]

9. Where I live, $25 an hour is considered damn good pay.

Only the upper crust where I live make that much an hour. The rest of us make way less than even $20 an hour and the majority make less than $10 an hour. Who are these rich ass people who make that much money per hour? :wow:

[snooper2]

22. So you have no plumbers, electricians, heavy equipment operators

cabinet makers, carpenters, trunk drivers, telecomunication professionals, welders, accountants,

[whopis01]

32. You think cabinet makers are making $25/hr?

Not to mention trunk driver?

[SoCalDem]

33. Where my husband works, they do.. They are a union cabinet shop

:)

[hfojvt]

11. How much time did somebody waste calculating these statistics?

And how much time did I waste reading them?

Like 26 man-seconds is gonna result in a measurable loss of production. Sheesh, they sound like my boss, trying to calculate everything down to the nano-man-second and then spending half an hour berating us for having wasted three of them.

[left is right]

13. It is pointless without an accompanying playbook

I am very non-musical but I can follow a color scheme to play notes: red, red, red, yellow

[unblock]

14. "Assuming the average Google user earns $25/hour" -- considering that many users don't have jobs

between stay-at-home parents, retirees, kids, those sick or disabled with unpaid leave, the unemployed, etc., there are many google users at $0/hour, nevermind that $25/hour is about $50,000/year, which would be an impressive average even if they meant only all the employed google users.

anyway, this is hopefully meant to be more jokey and serious. obviously, those who used the google doodle felt it would be more soul-enriching than time spent doing whatever else.

[cbdo2007]

18. I'm assuming it was mostly stoned college age kids playing it.....so

really it was all a wash.

[Brickbat]

19. Articles like these are like concern trolling for the bosses.

[proud patriot]

20. lol

I love it

[Skidmore]

23. Some Ferengi was making those calculations and I'm surprised they were not

expressed in terms of latinum.

[hunter]

24. Good. If humans weren't so damned "productive..."

... we wouldn't be so destructive.

[shanti]

25. i must be getting old...

what the hell is a doodle??

[unblock]

27. among the many things lies within this statistic is that people will waste time no matter what

it's not like they would have been focused like a laser beam on work but, and in the process of making a completely, work-necessary visit to google's home page, they were helplessly lured by the evil time-wasting les paul doodle, and wasted much otherwise productive work time than they otherwise would have.

why on earth wouldn't they consider that people might have done this on their break, after hours, or that had they not been wasting time on this, they would have been wasting time on something else -- like googling any of a brazillion things on google that AREN'T work-related?

by and large, people will goof off a certain portion of their work day no matter what, and if they don't waste it on one thing, they'll waste it on another. moreover, most workers are MORE productive across their entire day if they take (reasonable) breaks.

[SoCalDem]

28. "Sanity" breaks probably make one MORE productive..

I was a bookkeeper, and often taking time AWAY from something that did not balance, was all I needed to come back and spot it immediately..:)

[JHB]

29. How much of this time was "on the clock"?

If we don't have free time anymore and all time counts as "lost productivity", then someone owes me a hell of a lot of money for my time.

Will Extreme Tech be paying that, since they seem to have all the numbers on it?

[montanto]

30. I spend way more time playing with my own doodle at work.