Procter & Gamble bans Internet at work

• Tweet

CINCINNATI, April 6 (UPI) -- Procter & Gamble Co. restricted employees' Internet access this week, saying some workers were using up company bandwidth listening to music and viewing movies.

In a memo Tuesday, the company told its 129,000 employees they can no longer use music-streaming site Pandora or movie site Netflix at work, CNN reported.

"We are one of the more lenient companies in terms of providing access to the Internet, but there are some sites which don't serve a specific business purpose -- in this case, Netflix and Pandora," P&G spokesman Paul Fox said in an e-mail. "They are both great sites, but if you want to download movies or music, do it on your own time."

P&G said an internal investigation found its employees were watching 50,000 5-minute YouTube videos and listening to 4,000 hours of music on Pandora on a typical day, sometimes overtaxing the company's Internet capacity, "requiring immediate interaction."

P&G used YouTube to sell products from Tide detergent to Pringles to Duracell batteries, so Netflix was banned instead, in an effort to free up bandwidth.