If you, like so many others, checked Google's homepage today, you probably thought you were still hung over from the holiday weekend. You chased, you scrolled, but still you couldn't catch the logo because it had atomized like a "Star Trek" transporter beam.
But if you went to the box to type in your search term(s), the design finally calmed down to settle into place and form those familiar letters that have redefined our search engine experience.
With the success of previous interactive logos, like May's Pac-Man game, Google knows how to score a home run anytime it fiddles with its screamingly simplistic, brilliant home page.
Oh, and that Pac-Man game, it didn't come without a cost to productivity. CNET reported on a study that found 4.8 million man (and woman?) hours were wasted in chomping away, which amounted to $120 million lost. As RescueTime, the company that cranked out that study, put it, "you could hire all 19,835 google employees, from Larry and Sergey down to their janitors, and get 6 weeks of their time".
Thank goodness today's logo isn't a game, although we could see people spending some futile time chasing those dang balls.
MSNBC
