Google "Buckyball" Doodle Is A New Time Waster
By on September 3rd, 2010

Do you remember the Google PAC-MAN Doodle, which cost users 4.82 million hours and $120 million and also created quite a few issues for users? Well, the PAC-MAN game got a permanent home at Google, however, it looks like Google has just come up with another time-waster Doodle, this time for Google New Zealand.

google_buckyballs_25th_anniversary_doodle

The Google NZ Doodle celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the Buckyball, which are molecules composed entirely of carbon often found in the form of a hollow sphere or tube (More at Wikipedia). The Buckyball Doodle is also the second interactive Doodle used on a Google homepage.

When you visit http://google.co.nz you will see the Buckyball take form and can play around with it turning it with your mouse, however, unlike PAC-MAN, there is no coin slots for this, so play around with it till you want.

Update: This is a Global and is being rolled out to countries as the clock strikes 12AM.

(h/t @mattcutts)

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Author: Keith Dsouza Google Profile for Keith Dsouza
I am the editor-in-chief and owner of Techie Buzz. I love coding and have contributed to several open source projects in the past. You can know more about me and my projects by visiting my Personal Website. I am also a social networking enthusiast and can be found active on twitter, you can follow Keith on twitter @keithdsouza. You can click on my name to visit my Google+ profile.

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  • James Jones

    Well this Google BuckyBall thing is truely hellish.

    It effectively crashes my computer when I open the google home page with firefox. Computer becomes unresponsive. Completely. It took me several minutes to get the window closed. I had to turn the laptop to full performance and burn many useless Joules, just to close the damn window.

    In chrome it used 25% CPU – forever.

    Hello BING bye bye Google. The Teenagers HAVE taken over the Asylum.

    I guess I will HAVE to install some dreaded “Search toolbar” so that I NEVER have to see the Google home page again.

    You cannot believe how annoyed I am.

    Firstly Google broke my “one google login for Google Groups and one for gmail system”. The way Google silently changed stuff caused my private email address to be put on google groups. Bastards!!!!

    Then we had the weird and wonderful blank-ish white screen that it took me days to figure out that it stayed blank ’til I moved the mouse. I did not in fact figure it out, I searched to find out what was causing the maddening delay only to discover it was me. I was too stupid to realise that Google had decided to play a trick on me.

    Now google has decided to make their homepage unusable to me. Hopefully I can block it with AdBlocker plus.

    http://www.google.co.uk/firefox

    Does not have the damn thing.

    http://www.google.com/firefox likely too.

    You can use these even if you do not have firefox. Gets rid of the stupid blank page until you move the mouse too.

    PC is a dual core 1.9GHz laptop with 3G DRAM and Vista. the Bucky Ball Google logo trashes it completely.

    • John Smith II

      You should get a better computer. Don’t complain because your hardware can’t handle something, that’s your problem.

    • Iceman

      Iceman

      Me too…….bye bye google! Desktop freezes when google page loads with STUPID buckyball…………

      GET RID OF IT GOOGLE!

      Bing is your friend.

      :-)

    • http://digitizor.com Ricky Laishram

      “PC is a dual core 1.9GHz laptop with 3G DRAM and *VISTA*….”
      Well there lies your problem – Windows Vista.

      • Andy S

        Buckyball works just peachy on a 4 year old MacBook Pro, with only 1G ram, uses only about 10% CPU!!. But then again, I’m using a Mac, and I’m using Safari.

        Try a browser with a decent rending engine like maybe Chrome???

    • Joe

      I’m so much in agreement. I’ve got Firefox, Win 7 64bit, Intel quad and 6Gb of ram core and the google doodle bucky ball kills my broswer. I can’t beleive I’ve had to change my home page to Bing, talk about a company shooting itself in the foot. And I’ve been using Firefox for years but never had an issue like this!

  • Surya

    This doodle is really well done, this timewaster is here to stay !!

  • laura

    I hate Google more and more everyday with their pathetic attempts to “honor” the most unimportant things. Not only is it a time waster, but an insult to the intelligence of anyone who is not 12.

    • http://digitizor.com Ricky Laishram

      Yeah right, as if a 12 year olds knows what a fullerene is.

  • Chris

    Cute as it is, the Buckyball is astonishingly heavy on resources – up to 100% usage of both cpus in Firefox and about 50% in Opera in Mint 64bit and a bit less in WinXP.

    I wonder what the worldwide carbon (oops) footprint is…!?

  • James Pringle

    James Jones, you’re a funny guy, you complain so bitterly!

    The page poses no performance issues for the vast vast majority, it’s a tiny fun little script that my ageing net book laughs at. For you to have such problems suggest the problem lies at YOUR end.

    Personally I love all these little flourishes google adds. I enjoy the designs and usually I learn something interesting too. It’s great that a site which receives so much traffic flow does stuff like this.

    Enjoy BING! lol

  • Lotta D

    This resource hog is trashing my PC.
    I wonder what else google is doing with that CPU power drain?
    Go to Bing and it all stops.
    Why doesn’t Google stick to doodles that don’t destroy the work capability of the people who use google as a search engine?
    Go to Bing and whoosh no more PC problems…

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