A Google homepage doodle honouring guitar legend Les Paul has cost the world $268m in productivity, amounting to over 10.7 million man-hours being lost. Google has become renowned with featuring 'doodles' on its homepage to celebrate various events. The company's Les Paul tribute doodle, which was posted for two days last week, saw users spend 26 seconds more on the Google home page than usual, according to analytics from Rescue Time. From the 1,480 million Google users over the course of those two days, a total of 5,344,444 hours was spent playing with the doodle, which allowed users to record their own music. Assuming the average Google user earns $25/hour, the doodle cost companies around the world $268 million in lost productivity. This has even broken the records set by Google's worker distractions from last year, Pac Man. Due to the overwhelming popularity of the Les Paul doodle, Google have given it a permanent home here.

By providing those two links, it's even possible that we've just cost your company thousands of dollars of productivity, so sorry about that.