Google’s Pac-Man doodle which celebrated the game’s 30th Anniversary has been made permanently available.

Google’s celebratory Pac-Man doodle which adorned the search engine’s homepage on 21 May has been made permanently available despite costing reportedly millions of dollars in productivity as workers spent hours playing it.

Google’s Pac-Man doodle was designed to celebrate the iconic computer game’s 30th anniversary, but what started out as a fun way to attract users has, according to RescueTime, cost employers around 4.82 million hours of lost productivity or $120.5 million (£83m).

RescueTime provides a time management tool to allow individuals and businesses to track their time and attention to see where their days go. It says that the average user visiting the search engine on Friday 21 May spent around 36 seconds more time on the homepage compared with previous Friday’s, with the homepage experiencing more than 500,000 unique visitors.

The game could be played by users simply clicking on the ‘Insert coin’ button to the right of the ‘Search’ button, although RescueTime estimates that around 75% of the visitors to the homepage did not even know they could play.

Google’s doodles have become a well-loved feature of the search engine. They were first launched in 1999 when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin played with the logo to announce their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Since then more than 300 Google Doodles – based on international holidays, historical events and more – have been created by a team of designers to “enliven the Google homepage and bring smiles to a myriad of Google users worldwide.”

Google’s VP Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, announced on Sunday 23 May that due to overwhelming demand for the Pac-Man doodle, the game will be permanently available at www.google.com/pacman.