Well, apparently today is the 66th aniversary of the Roswell incident and Google got in on it.

Getting past the usual stuff, there's a minigame on the mane google page. I think many of us will understand the "plausible" preference of the game. It's short. It's decent. It's an alright game that lasts for a total of 5 to 15 min depending upon how you play it.

What I want to know is how everyone feels about Google "investing" time, energy, and more importantly the resources/capital/money into making these little games. Could the money be better spent elsewhere?

Game Info Spoiler:

Ermm...why do we care what Google does with their profits?

I don't care how what they do with their money, all I know is those Google Doodle are great and Google employs/pays someone to do this as well so it's only a good thing.

I don't see why you feel the need to be indignant or personally offended by it.

Google is not obliged in any way to use their money and talent for only the things you deem permissable. It's a cute little game, and somebody probably had a lot of fun making it up over a weekend.

You know, fun. That thing people used to have before everything turned politically correct.

I like the fun doodles they have, if they want to amuse me for a few minutes then good for them.

Never have played around with any of their doodles myself, but I always do hover my cursor over them so I can satisfy my curiosity on what they are about.

Obviously this is some trick being pulled by the Illuminati. And don't you dare deny it because it's true.

Well, before we throw out everything in the world that does not have a productive purpose, do you have any suggestions for how they could have spent these resources?

Uh... Creating World Peace?

Impractical and impossible.

Personally, I do not think it is not a waste to have a little fun. Sure, this is not the only interactive doodle Google has done but the profits are not all going into the doodle which I am sure is not disgustingly dollar consuming for a company.

IMHO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products with where the next dollar comes from and they do not intend to stop.

I'm not offended by it, nor do I care personally. I just want to get a sense of what others think/feel about it. The Pacman thing for the Google Homepage was rather expensive, costing around $120M. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20005958-52.html

It's Google's money and they can do with it as they please. In all honesty, I just find myself curious, thinking the money could have been better spent on other things.

Food production investment, local business startup loans to create more jobs, donating it to research into medicine to try and help lower rising costs of pills, cleaner energy resources, and/or giving it to charity that benefits humans, animals, or both.

I can't help looking at some things, thinking the money is better spent on something else.

I did not realize that it cost them that much!

Google is a billion-dollar industry so maybe $120M is not much to them, idk. Thanks for the article link, though.

It may not have always been the case, but Google actually does have a profit motive for doing the doodles. They become news stories in their own right and direct and keep traffic that might not have been going to Google in the first place. The more page hits Google gets, and they get a metric tonne, the more money they'll stand to earn from the ads they display.

If that is the case, I didn't think of that. It sounds just like how some "news" sites (for any outlet) pays the "journalist" for each page view the article gets, but in this case it is the counter for the doodle in question.

However, that does not add up to the supposed $120M loss as explained in Pred's link because lots and lots of people played that Pac-Man doodle that day. Unless the article was slightly dramatized, who knows

The article says it cost lost productivity from those who played it, not that it cost Google that amount.

I wonder how much lost productivity posting on these forums costs?

We might have been visited by aliens 66 years ago and everyone is talking about Google's little gimmicks on their website.

Nah, I can still get my job done, post and moderate all at the same time.

Since when is that Google's Job? They just need to provide access via search to the information for those who's jobs it is to accomplish these things.