40M songs recorded on Google's Les Paul Doodle

In just 48 hours, online musicians recorded some 5.1 years worth of music with the immensely popular digital guitar that Google made as a tribute to guitar hero Les Paul. Google said that the amount of music, equivalent to 40 million songs, was recorded in the United States, where Google extended its guitar Google Doodle by an added 24 hours due to high public demand. “In 48 hrs in the US, you recorded 5.1 yrs worth of music (40M songs) w/ last week’s Les Paul doodle! Keep playing," Google said in its Twitter account Saturday. Last June 9, Google uploaded the guitar Google Doodle as 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 June 9. The doodle was an instant hit, with musicians and even celebrities posting their works onlne. Caving in to popular demand, Google gave the “Les Paul" doodle a permanent home online, after it initially extended for 24 hours the “Les Paul" doodle, but only in its United States site. Visitors who wish to strum on the digital guitar can now go to http://www.google.com/logos/2011/lespaul.html and play to their hearts’ content. An earlier estimate by RescueTime, a time management and employee time tracking software, indicated 5.8 million hours had been spent on the doodle last June 9 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 vistor 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. On the other hand, Extreme Tech said the playable digital guitar may have cost Google $15,000 (P650,024) but cost the rest of the world a whopping $268 million (P11.613 billion). — TJD, GMA News