
Do a Google Image search for "atari breakout" - oneandoneis2
http://images.google.com/
======
chris_wot
Great, I'm a fan of Atari Breakout pictures. Now I can't see images of Atari
Breakout.

Damn you Google!

~~~
psbp
There's a return to image search button in the middle of the page.

~~~
chris_wot
I was too busy playing the game to notice.

------
allenz
Incidentally, the game also reveals a list of 418 specific image searches that
Google considers interesting: <http://pastebin.com/G3mZf0C6>

I wonder Google came up with that list.

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IgorPartola
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
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-a...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/08/today-is-goof-off-at-work-
day.html)

~~~
IgorPartola
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.

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

------
oneandoneis2
Their Pac-Man Doodle allegedly caused ~5million lost hours of productivity, I
look forward to seeing how much this one racks up :)

~~~
BaconJuice
hey is that 5million lost hours an actual amount? or did you just make it up
lol just curious.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
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-
goo...](http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/05/24/the-tragic-cost-of-google-pac-
man-4-82-million-hours/)

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

------
makepanic
previous discussion <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5703713>

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

~~~
martinml
And more
[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=br...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=breakout&sortby=create_ts+desc)

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

~~~
mayank
It's a whole team, actually :)

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joering2
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
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
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!

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RaSoJo
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
I got "jellyfish." I think it might just be interesting picture searches from
a list.

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

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pow-tac
See <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5702208>

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fghh45sdfhr3
If you screen is small enough, your paddle ends up above the images. (I tried
this with Firefox 20.0.1)

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

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jemka
without quotes

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sairamkunala
nice

