Google gives popular Les Paul doodle a permanent home

Caving in to popular demand, search giant Google has given its hit "Les Paul" doodle – a playable digital guitar – a permanent home online. The decision came after Google initially extended for 24 hours the Les Paul doodle, but only in its United States site. "Good news for Les Paul fans: his doodle now has a permanent home, so you can keep playing," it said in a post on its Twitter account. Visitors who wish to strum on the digital guitar can now go to and play to their hearts' content. The doodle, initially posted June 9, was a tribute to American inventor and "guitar hero" Lester William Polsfuss (Les Paul). Paul, who is credited for popularizing innovations such as delay effects, phasing effects and multi-track recording, collaborated in the design of the "Gibson Les Paul" electric guitar. He would have turned 96 last Thursday. An estimate by RescueTime, a time management and employee time tracking software, indicated 5.8 million hours were spent on the doodle last Thursday alone. RescueTime's blog also noted tweets coming in for the trending tag #lespaul at a speed of 20 tweets/second or more. "With each major online publication commenting and recommending the Les Paul Doodle, traffic was way up and people kept talking all day!" it said. RescueTime said its estimates showed the average user spent 26 seconds more on Google.com than in previous time periods last June 9. On average, users spent 36 more seconds time on last year’s Pac-Man Doodle, it added. Yet, it said figures from Wolfram Alpha and Alexa showed Google’s daily unique visitor count went up to 740 million versus the 505 million last year. "Google’s Les Paul Doodle consumed an additional 5,350,789 hours of time versus the 4,819,352 hours consumed by the Pac-Man Doodle... Users did not spend much more total time at their computer than previous periods, but they did spend 10% more time at Google’s website than they typically would, meaning that the 10% more time spent at Google was stolen from other computer use time," it added. "We are already looking forward to the next interactive Doodle and wondering how it will stack up," RescueTime said. — LBG, GMA News