Google Doodle facts for kids
A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages that commemorates holidays, events, achievements, and people. The first Google Doodle honored the Burning Man festival in 1998, and was designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. Subsequent Google Doodles were designed by an outside contractor until 2000, when Page and Brin asked public relations officer Dennis Hwang to design a logo for Bastille Day. Since then, a team of employees called Doodlers have organized and published the Doodles.
Initially, Doodles were neither animated nor hyperlinked—they were simply images with hovertext describing the subject or expressing a holiday greeting. Doodles increased in both frequency and complexity by the beginning of the 2010s. In January 2010 the first animated Doodle honored Sir Isaac Newton. The first interactive Doodle appeared shortly thereafter celebrating Pac-Man, and hyperlinks also began to be added to Doodles, usually linking to a search results page for the subject of the Doodle. By 2014, Google had published over 2,000 regional and international Doodles throughout its homepages, often featuring guest artists, musicians, and personalities.
Contents
Overview
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As well as celebrating many well-known events and holidays, Google Doodles are known for celebrating several noted artists and scientists on their birthdays, including Andy Warhol, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Rabindranath Tagore, Louis Braille, Ella Fitzgerald, Percival Lowell, Edvard Munch, Nikola Tesla, Béla Bartók, René Magritte, Norman Hetherington, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Vladimir Dakhno, Robert Moog, Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, H. G. Wells, Freddie Mercury, Samuel Morse, Hans Christian Ørsted, Mahatma Gandhi, Dennis Gabor, Édith Piaf, Constantin Brâncuși, Antonio Vivaldi, Abdel Halim Hafez, Jules Verne, Leonhard Euler, and James Welch, among over 9,000 others. The featuring of Lowell's logo design coincided with the launch of another Google product, Google Maps. Google Doodles are also used to depict major events at Google, such as the company's own anniversary. The celebration of historical events is another common topic of Google Doodles including a Lego brick design in celebration of the interlocking Lego block's 50th anniversary. Some Google Doodles are limited to Google's country-specific home pages while others appear globally.
Doodlers
The illustrators, engineers, and artists who design Google Doodles are called "Doodlers." These doodlers have included artists like Ekua Holmes, Jennifer Hom, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Ranganath Krishnamani, and Dennis Hwang.
Interactive and video doodles
In May 2010, on the 30th anniversary of the arcade game Pac-Man, Google unveiled worldwide their first interactive logo, created in association with Namco. Anyone who visited Google could play Pac-Man on the logo, which featured the letters of the word "Google" on the Pac-Man maze. The logo also mimicked the sounds the original arcade game made. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button was replaced with an "Insert Coin" button. Pressing this once enabled you to play the Pac-Man logo. Pressing it once more added a second player, Ms. Pac-Man, enabling two players to play at once, controlled using the W, A, S, D keys, instead of the arrows as used by Player 1. Pressing it for a third time performed an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search. It was then removed on May 23, 2010, initially replacing Pac-Man with the normal logo. Later on that day, Google released a permanent Google Pac-Man site, due to the popular user demand for the playable logo.
Common themes
Since Google first celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday with a Doodle in 1998, many Doodles for holidays, events, and other celebrations have recurred on an annual basis, including the following:
- Gregorian New Year (2000–present)
- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (2003; 2006–present)
- Lunar New Year (2001; 2003–present)
- Valentine's Day (2000–present; partial exception during certain Olympic years)
- International Women's Day (2005; 2009–present)
- Saint Patrick's Day (2000–2002; 2004–present)
- Earth Day (2001–present)
- Mother's Day (2000–present)
- Father's Day (2000–present)
- U.S. Independence Day (2000–present)
- Bastille Day (2000–present)
- Olympic Games (2000–present; partial exception in 2014)
- Halloween (1999–present)
- U.S. Thanksgiving Day (1998–present)
- Christmas (1999–present)
- New Year's Eve (2010–present)
"Doodle 4 Google" competitions
Google holds competitions for school students to create their own Google doodles, referred to as "Doodle 4 Google". Winning doodles go onto the Doodle 4 Google website, where the public can vote for the winner, who wins a trip to the Googleplex and the hosting of the winning doodle for 24 hours on the Google website.
The competition originated in the United Kingdom, and has since expanded to the United States and other countries. The competition was also held in Ireland in 2008. Google announced a Doodle 4 Google competition for India in 2009 and the winning doodle was displayed on the Google India homepage on November 14. A similar competition held in Singapore based on the theme "Our Singapore" was launched in January 2010 and the winning entry was chosen from over 30,000 entries received. The winning design will be shown on Singapore's National Day on Google Singapore's homepage. It was held again in 2015 in Singapore and was themed 'Singapore: The next 50 years'.
Images for kids
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The original Google "Doodler", Dennis Hwang at a Doodle 4 Google event in Beijing, 2009
See also
In Spanish: Doodle de Google para niños
