Play Pac-Man on Google's Homepage

Google's doodles start to become more interactive. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, Google created a doodle that lets you play the game. Go to Google's homepage and the game starts automatically after 10 seconds.

"Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the U.S. by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular in the United States from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is universally considered as one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games, and an icon of the 1980s popular culture."

I wonder how many people will forget why they visited Google's homepage and will start playing Pac-Man. The worst part is that the sound can't be turned off and it will surprise or annoy a lot of Google users. "If you're not a Pac Man fan or want to skip the music and lights, just enter you search query as usual and you'll be directed to our normal search results page. Other options include: closing your browser, turning the volume down or off on your computer, playing Pac Man all day long," suggests a Google employee. You can also disable Flash for google.com or use FlashMute, a software for silencing Flash sites. Google should have turned off the sound by default or at least should have provided an option to disable the music. The good news is that the game doesn't start if you type a query in the search box.





Update: The CoolPreviews extension for Firefox preloads Google's homepages, so you'll hear the Pac-Man sound even if you don't visit Google's homepage. The latest version, which can be downloaded from coolpreviews.com, fixes the problem.

Update 2: The sound is now disabled by default and you can only hear it when you start playing the game. The Pac-Man doodle replaces Google's logo for 48 hours.