6 ms·

Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout"

90 points by oneandoneis2 13y ago

sairamkunala 13y ago
nice
oneandoneis2 13y ago
Their Pac-Man Doodle allegedly caused ~5million lost hours of productivity, I look forward to seeing how much this one racks up :)
- BaconJuice 13y ago
  hey is that 5million lost hours an actual amount? or did you just make it up lol just curious.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    5 million hours of productivity lost in 1 day. The total is many times higher. http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/05/24/the-tragic-cost-of-google-pac-man-4-82-million-hours/ http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/05/24/the-tragic-cost-of-goo...
- VMG 13y ago
  Assuming that those who played the game would have been productive otherwise.
- yaskyj 13y ago
  Just in case: https://www.google.com/doodles/30th-anniversary-of-pac-man https://www.google.com/doodles/30th-anniversary-of-pac-man
makepanic 13y ago
previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703713 previous previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701553
- martinml 13y ago
  And more https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=breakout&sortby=create_ts+desc https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=br...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jemka 13y ago
without quotes
pow-tac 13y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702208
icatchcows 13y ago
I'd love to be the person responsible for creating these. Talk about an awesome job description.
- mayank 13y ago
  It's a whole team, actually :)
CapitalistCartr 13y ago
You bad, bad person. I already didn't have enough to do today. http://xkcd.com/356/ http://xkcd.com/356/
WinnyDaPoo 13y ago
The previous post with this topic is still ranking higher than yours. Please "skim" HN before posting ;).
chris_wot 13y ago
Great, I'm a fan of Atari Breakout pictures. Now I can't see images of Atari Breakout. Damn you Google!
- psbp 13y ago
  There's a return to image search button in the middle of the page.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    I was too busy playing the game to notice.
allenz 13y ago
Incidentally, the game also reveals a list of 418 specific image searches that Google considers interesting: http://pastebin.com/G3mZf0C6 http://pastebin.com/G3mZf0C6 I wonder Google came up with that list.
smoyer 13y ago
When I cleared the level it automatically searched for cabbage roll and now I'm hungry. Did they also arrange an order for delivery?
RaSoJo 13y ago
Was it just me? After finishing one game and clicking on returning to images i ended up with an image search page with the search term as "Budgerigar"...An interesting looking bird. If intentional, any specific significance?
- rthomas6 13y ago
  I got "jellyfish." I think it might just be interesting picture searches from a list.
fghh45sdfhr3 13y ago
If you screen is small enough, your paddle ends up above the images. (I tried this with Firefox 20.0.1)
IgorPartola 13y ago
This stuff is both great and depressing. The problem is that some companies, like Google, 37signals, etc. let their workers do these kinds of projects. Yes, some of them will bring those companies more customers, but the reality is that it's not clear if the hours put into this type of thing will ever pay off. Despite that, these companies can afford to have 20% time, or whatever it is, and let their employees mess around. What makes me sad about this is how this kind of stuff is perceived by the rest of the community. People seem to follow the cargo cult of "Google has 20% time, so should we", thinking that it's the 20% time that makes Google special. I think copying this behavior until you are flush with cash is dangerous. I tried to implement it with the previous team I ran and it was more or less a disaster. It became an entitlement which you couldn't take away, but did not produce any direct or even indirect positive results no matter how we spun it. Productivity actually suffered as a result, while the 20% projects were completely unusable. Has any startup been able to get away with this kind of thing, and if so how did you do it? Edit: I should add that my previous team was a mess on many levels. While we had brilliant individuals, getting the company to move in lockstep in one direction was close to impossible, so there are many confounding factors to my experience. Perhaps a happy team that hadn't been terrorized by the upper management for a year and a half would have done better.
- hk__2 13y ago
  This is not new, in the 1950s HP and 3M employees had respectively 10% and 15% time. The post-it was invented during this 15% time at 3M. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/08/today-is-goof-off-at-work-day.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/08/today-is-goof-off-a...
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    That makes sense. And I'm sure a ton of time was spent on things that never saw the light of day. I guess my view on it is that if you want to run a lean startup, X% time is going to work against you. Once you are the size of Google, Amazon, HP, or 3M, then go for it. Otherwise, your startup is your X% time. This gets tricky with companies that are no longer startups, but are not the 800 lb gorilla in their space either. Do you derive more efficiency from fostering X% time, or by getting your team to focus on the problem at hand? I suppose that in the end, if your team is unhappy with the overall direction of your company, throwing them an occasional carrot will not fix things. You need to actually fix the underlying problem.
joering2 13y ago
Its truly awkward and surprising that google continues to have time for easter eggs like this one, but yet continue to sunset/kill valuable projects like Reader and others because there is noone at their organisation to maintain the codebase.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  Hey HN, let's get it all out of our system in replies to joering2! Who here is still frustrated about Google killing off Reader, but hasn't yet commented about it on an unrelated story? Vent on!
  - freehunter 13y ago
    Yeah, it's almost like Google had a reason for shuttering Reader that is almost completely unlike any other product they offer. If they close the unprofitable Reader, obviously the massively profitable [insert product here] will be next!
gukov 13y ago
I'd rather them support their existing products than create this.

90 points by oneandoneis2 13y ago

nice

Their Pac-Man Doodle allegedly caused ~5million lost hours of productivity, I look forward to seeing how much this one racks up :)

BaconJuice 13y ago
hey is that 5million lost hours an actual amount? or did you just make it up lol just curious.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  5 million hours of productivity lost in 1 day. The total is many times higher. http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/05/24/the-tragic-cost-of-google-pac-man-4-82-million-hours/ http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/05/24/the-tragic-cost-of-goo...
VMG 13y ago
Assuming that those who played the game would have been productive otherwise.
yaskyj 13y ago
Just in case: https://www.google.com/doodles/30th-anniversary-of-pac-man https://www.google.com/doodles/30th-anniversary-of-pac-man

makepanic 13y ago

previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703713 previous previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701553

martinml 13y ago
And more https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=breakout&sortby=create_ts+desc https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=br...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jemka 13y ago

without quotes

pow-tac 13y ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702208

icatchcows 13y ago

I'd love to be the person responsible for creating these. Talk about an awesome job description.

mayank 13y ago
It's a whole team, actually :)

CapitalistCartr 13y ago

You bad, bad person. I already didn't have enough to do today. http://xkcd.com/356/ http://xkcd.com/356/

WinnyDaPoo 13y ago

The previous post with this topic is still ranking higher than yours. Please "skim" HN before posting ;).

chris_wot 13y ago

Great, I'm a fan of Atari Breakout pictures. Now I can't see images of Atari Breakout. Damn you Google!

psbp 13y ago
There's a return to image search button in the middle of the page.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  I was too busy playing the game to notice.

allenz 13y ago

Incidentally, the game also reveals a list of 418 specific image searches that Google considers interesting: http://pastebin.com/G3mZf0C6 http://pastebin.com/G3mZf0C6 I wonder Google came up with that list.

smoyer 13y ago

When I cleared the level it automatically searched for cabbage roll and now I'm hungry. Did they also arrange an order for delivery?

RaSoJo 13y ago

Was it just me? After finishing one game and clicking on returning to images i ended up with an image search page with the search term as "Budgerigar"...An interesting looking bird. If intentional, any specific significance?

rthomas6 13y ago
I got "jellyfish." I think it might just be interesting picture searches from a list.

fghh45sdfhr3 13y ago

If you screen is small enough, your paddle ends up above the images. (I tried this with Firefox 20.0.1)

IgorPartola 13y ago

This stuff is both great and depressing. The problem is that some companies, like Google, 37signals, etc. let their workers do these kinds of projects. Yes, some of them will bring those companies more customers, but the reality is that it's not clear if the hours put into this type of thing will ever pay off. Despite that, these companies can afford to have 20% time, or whatever it is, and let their employees mess around. What makes me sad about this is how this kind of stuff is perceived by the rest of the community. People seem to follow the cargo cult of "Google has 20% time, so should we", thinking that it's the 20% time that makes Google special. I think copying this behavior until you are flush with cash is dangerous. I tried to implement it with the previous team I ran and it was more or less a disaster. It became an entitlement which you couldn't take away, but did not produce any direct or even indirect positive results no matter how we spun it. Productivity actually suffered as a result, while the 20% projects were completely unusable. Has any startup been able to get away with this kind of thing, and if so how did you do it? Edit: I should add that my previous team was a mess on many levels. While we had brilliant individuals, getting the company to move in lockstep in one direction was close to impossible, so there are many confounding factors to my experience. Perhaps a happy team that hadn't been terrorized by the upper management for a year and a half would have done better.

hk__2 13y ago
This is not new, in the 1950s HP and 3M employees had respectively 10% and 15% time. The post-it was invented during this 15% time at 3M. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/08/today-is-goof-off-at-work-day.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/08/today-is-goof-off-a...
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  That makes sense. And I'm sure a ton of time was spent on things that never saw the light of day. I guess my view on it is that if you want to run a lean startup, X% time is going to work against you. Once you are the size of Google, Amazon, HP, or 3M, then go for it. Otherwise, your startup is your X% time. This gets tricky with companies that are no longer startups, but are not the 800 lb gorilla in their space either. Do you derive more efficiency from fostering X% time, or by getting your team to focus on the problem at hand? I suppose that in the end, if your team is unhappy with the overall direction of your company, throwing them an occasional carrot will not fix things. You need to actually fix the underlying problem.

joering2 13y ago

Its truly awkward and surprising that google continues to have time for easter eggs like this one, but yet continue to sunset/kill valuable projects like Reader and others because there is noone at their organisation to maintain the codebase.

IgorPartola 13y ago
Hey HN, let's get it all out of our system in replies to joering2! Who here is still frustrated about Google killing off Reader, but hasn't yet commented about it on an unrelated story? Vent on!
- freehunter 13y ago
  Yeah, it's almost like Google had a reason for shuttering Reader that is almost completely unlike any other product they offer. If they close the unprofitable Reader, obviously the massively profitable [insert product here] will be next!

gukov 13y ago

I'd rather them support their existing products than create this.