The Ultimate List and History of Google Doodles
Google, one of the largest tech companies today has quite an interesting thing going on with their logo which, I’m sure, you’ve already noticed. Google Doodles, as they’re called, are special Google logos that are a homage to something that happened on that day.
The first Google Doodle was featured in August 1998. and it was designed by Google’s founders; Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was a doodle which notified the users of a Burning Man Festival, which Page and Brin attended, so if the servers crashed, you would know why Google was offline. Later on, Google Doodles became more than random logos; they became a part of Google’s culture. Today, when there’s a birthday of someone influential coming up, or it’s a day when something memorable happened in history, we, the people from the Internets are always checking out if there is a new doodle on Google’s homepage.
Who Makes Google Doodles?
Although Sergey and Larry made the first one, Dennis Hwang was in charge of doodles later on. Check out how he does it:
[youtube width=”555″ height=”406″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOOY0xuQ3TU[/youtube]
As the demand for doodles grew, a team of talented illustrators and engineers took over. Google has done more than 1,000 doodles by now and if you want to give them a suggestion, mail them at proposals@google.com. You can read more about Doodle4Google program on their homepage. While most of the doodles were static images, many of them are more and more interactive.
The Most Notable Google Doodles
Here are some of the most notable Google Doodles. There are over a thousand of them, so we couldn’t fit them all into a single post. If you have time on your hands, check them all out on Google Doodles Finder.
Freddie Mercury’s 65th Birthday – if you clicked Play on the logo, you’d start a great tribute to Freddie Mercury:
[youtube width=”555″ height=”312″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe0gIFxYhrk[/youtube]
Les Paul’s 96th Birthday – Google Doodle which you could play like a guitar, record it and send a link to a friend.
50th Anniversary of the First Man in Space – Hover over it with your mouse and launch the rocket!
Mark Twain’s 176th Birthday – this Doodle had several steps in the making, check them out!
55th Anniversary: Rosa Parks refuses to move – honoring the protest in which Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, Google had this Doodle made up for December 1st in 2010.
Bruce Lee’s 70th Birthday – a Doodle honoring one of the greatest martial arts professionals.
Discovery of X-rays
2500th Anniversary of the Marathon
30th Anniversary of PAC-MAN – this was probably one of the most successful Google Doodles; you could play Pac-Man and if you’ve inserted another coin (just pressing the button actually), you could play with another player! Try it out!
Pi Day – Every mathematician knows that March 14th is the Pi Day.
Pierre de Fermat’s 410th Birthday – Google also remembered Pierre de Fermat’s birthday.
Google Doodles are a great way for Google to show it’s not just a big evil corporation, but a caring, socially aware company that wants to celebrate big days with you. Even more, some doodles are shown globally, while the others are shown only in some countries.
Depending on Google’s next moves in some other areas of its business, we’ll see if the doodles confirm their Do no evil philosophy. What are your favorite Google Doodles?
