The Google Doodle is a short-term modification made to the Google logo; it is aimed at commemorating and celebrating important people in history, holidays, accomplishments, anniversaries and other special occasions.
The Google Doodle was designed and first used by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. Brin and Page made plans to attend the Burning Man festival, an annual event hosted by the state of Nevada and needing a way to let Google users know that they would be out of office and unable help or fix any issues that could have arisen, they created the very first Google Doodle. The original doodle depicted the traditional multi-colored logo in front of a stick figure with arms raised in celebration.
The Google Doodle has come to be enjoyed by people all over the world and is used to mark special occasions such as Christmas and New Year’s Day, the birthdays of influential people such as the artists Andy Warhol and Auguste Rodin, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and singer-songwriter Gustavo Cerati. Google will also use Doodles to mark the anniversaries of important inventions, as was the case on the 26th of January 2016 when the Doodle honoured the 90th anniversary of the first demonstration of the television. Google also uses the Doodles to commemorate important events that take place at Google such as the anniversary of the company’s founding.
In 2000 Google intern Dennis Hwang designed a logo to mark the celebration of Bastille Day, this logo was well liked by the public and from that point on the Google Doodle has been a regular and an entertaining part of the Google user experience. The responsibility of Doodle creation now falls to a team of skilled individuals including engineers and illustrators (also known as Doodlers) who have created an image archive over 2000 doodles in size. The Doodlers find inspiration for the Google doodles in a variety of places such as fellow Google employees and the numerous dedicated Google search engine users.
Evolving from the simple stickman representing the co-founders trip to Burning Man, they now include animations and hyperlinks that will direct the user to a search results page filled with information on the subject of the Doodle. In 2010 the 30th anniversary of the Pac-Man arcade game was celebrated with the creation of Google’s first interactive logo, allowing users visiting the Google homepage to play a miniature version of the Pac-Man game, which featured the Google logo inside the Pac-Man maze. The popularity of this interactive logo led to the release of a permanent Google Pac-man site.
Although Google has experienced some criticism with regard to subject choice, they remain dedicated to making choices that spotlight many different aspects of society and culture. Each year, team Google Doodle choose events and figures that have not previously been included, sometimes resulting controversy. This was the situation faced by Google when the featured Doodle on their US homepage paid homage to American activist Cesar Chavez and not the Easter holiday being celebrated at the time. Google also hosts a competition called “Doodle 4 Google”, originating in the United Kingdom and aimed at students undertaking primary or secondary education. Individuals can create their own Google Doodle and winners receive a host of amazing prizes including a trip to the celebrated Googleplex, Google’s headquarters located in California.
People from anywhere in the world are free approach Google with suggestions for a Google Doodle. Your ideas can be submitted to the Doodle team at proposals@google.com, keep in mind that the team receives hundreds of suggestions on a daily basis and work hard to examine the potential of each and every suggestion sent their way.