Google Doodle

A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running annual Burning Man event in Black Rock City, Nevada, and was designed by co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. Early marketing employee Susan Wojcicki then spearheaded subsequent Doodles, including an alien landing on Google and additional custom logos for major holidays. Google Doodles were designed by an outside contractor, cartoonist Ian David Marsden 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 tooltips describing the subject or expressing a holiday greeting. Doodles increased in both frequency and complexity by the beginning of the 2010s. On October 31, 2000, the first animated Doodle celebrated Halloween. On May 21, 2010, the first interactive Doodle appeared later 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. By 2024, the Doodlers team had created over 5,000 Doodles for Google's homepages around the world.

Overview

In addition to celebrating many well-known events and holidays, Google Doodles celebrate artists and scientists on their birthdays. The featuring of Lowell's logo design coincided with the launch of another Google product, Google Maps. Doodles are also used to depict major events at Google, such as the company's own anniversary. The celebration of historic 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.

Common themes

Since the first Thanksgiving Doodle in 1998, many Doodles for holidays, events and other celebrations have recurred annually. These include:

Doodlers is Google's name for the illustrators, engineers and artists who design the Doodles. They have included artists like Ekua Holmes, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Lynnette Haozous, and Eric Carle.

Notable doodles

In May 2010, on the 30th anniversary of the 1980 arcade game Pac-Man, Google unveiled worldwide their first interactive logo, a playable Pac-Man Google Doodle, 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 the user to play the Pac-Man logo. Pressing it again 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 , due to the popular user demand for the playable logo. Pac-Man Doodle drew an estimated 1billion players worldwide.
Since that time, Google has continued to post occasional interactive and video doodles:

2010s

On June 8, 2010, composer Robert Schumann was celebrated with a Google Doodle for his 200th birthday.
On September 4, 2010, the Google logo was changed to an to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its discovery. The Buckyball, also known as Buckminsterfullerene, is a molecule made entirely of carbon and shaped like a geodesic dome.
On September 6, 2010, Google launched its fourth interactive Google Doodle. ' replaced its static logo with a JavaScript-based particle movement simulator where dynamic colored balls can be manipulated with the movement of the mouse cursor over the logo, or by shaking of the browser window. Unlike some other Google Doodles, this one is unclickable.
On September 7, 2010, another Google Instant family logo known as ' was released. A grayed-out colorless logo lit up with the standard Google colors as the first six letters of a search query were entered.
On October 8, 2010, Google ran its first video doodle, a short animation set to the music of "Imagine" to mark what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday. Similarly, Freddie Mercury's would-be 65th birthday was celebrated on September 5, 2011, with an animated clip set to "Don't Stop Me Now".
On April 15, 2011, Google sported the first live-action video doodle, in commemoration of Charlie Chaplin's 122nd birthday. This doodle was a black and white YouTube video that, when clicked upon, started playing before redirecting to the usual Google search featuring the doodle's special occasion. All parts in this short film were played by the Google Doodle team, and special behind-the-scenes footage was to be found on the Google blog.
Google displayed an interactive electric guitar doodle starting June 9, 2011, to commemorate the 96th birthday of Les Paul. Apart from being able to hover the cursor over the doodle to strum the strings just like one of Les Paul's Gibson guitars, there was also a keyboard button, which when enabled allowed interaction with the doodle via the keyboard. The doodle still maintained some resemblance to the Google logo. In the U.S., the doodle also allowed the user to record a 30-second clip, after which a URL is created and can be sent to others. The doodle remained on the site an extra day due to popularity in the U.S. It now has its own page linked to the Google Doodles archives.
On January 18, 2012, for users in the United States, Google placed a censor bar on top of their logo to protest SOPA and PIPA.
On May 23, 2012, for what would have been instrument inventor and synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog's 78th birthday, the Doodle team pulled off their own feat of engineering: a fully playable and recordable Google logo resembling a vintage Minimoog Model D synthesizer. Electronic analog Moog Synthesizer timbre and tones would come to define a generation of music, featuring heavily in songs by The Beatles, The Doors, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk and many others. Much like the musical machines Bob Moog created, this doodle was synthesized from a number of smaller components to form a unique instrument. Mouse or computer keyboard was used to control the mini-synthesizer's keys and knobs and fiddle with oscillators and envelopes. patched the keyboard into a 4-track tape recorder that could share songs.
On April 9, 2012, motion picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge was celebrated in a Google doodle.
On June 21, 2012, Google celebrated what would have been Soviet singer-songwriter Viktor Tsoi's 50th birthday with a Google Doodle that shared resemblance with the Tsoi Wall.
On June 23, 2012, in commemoration of Alan Turing's 100th birthday, Google's logo became an interactive Turing Machine.
On August 8, 2012, Google displayed an interactive Basketball game for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
On September 13, 2012, Google created a doodle for Clara Schumann to commemorate her 193rd birthday.
On December 10, 2012, Google celebrated computing pioneer Ada Lovelace.
On January 2, 2013, Maurice Sendak was celebrated in a Google doodle inspired by his Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen.
On November 23, 2013, Google's logo changed to a playable Doctor Who game in honor of the show's 50th anniversary.
On May 19, 2014, for the 40th anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, Google made an interactive virtual Rubik's Cube that people could try to solve.
On April 14, 2015, for the 155th anniversary of the Pony Express, Google made a playable 2D side-scrolling doodle game in which the player collects mail, avoids obstacles, and delivers up to 100 letters from California to Missouri.
On October 1, 2015, Annie Besant's 168th birthday was commemorated with a Doodle.
On December 17, 2015, a Google Doodle was featured honoring the 245th anniversary of Beethoven's date of birth. It features an interactive game to match the musical writing in correct order as it featured 4 levels.
On January 22, 2016, for the 151st birthday of Wilbur Scoville, creator of the Scoville Scale, Google made a playable doodle game in which the player plays as an ice cream cone throwing ice cream scoops at a variety of peppers to neutralize their heat. Gameplay is based on the timing of a mouse click or space bar press which rapidly increases in difficulty. The game includes 5 levels, each featuring a different type of pepper and a fun fact about the peppers along with their measured Scoville Heat Units.
On August 5, 2016, for the 2016 Summer Olympics, the Google app received an update for Android and iOS devices to include 7 mini games called Doodle Fruit Games featuring Strawberry, Blueberry, Coconut, Pineapple, and more. It lasted until August 21, with a new mini game every day. The game was accessible on the Google app by clicking on a play button.
On October 30, 2016, for Halloween, Google added a game series called Magic Cat Academy, featuring a cat named Momo fighting ghosts. To play, users had to click on a play button, and "draw" to kill the ghosts.
On February 11, 12, 13 and 14, 2017, for Valentine's Day, Google added a game featuring the endangered pangolin, an African and Asian mammal, that goes through four levels, while collecting objects, and avoiding obstacles.
On 28 February 2017, Google celebrated humanitarian Edhi with a Google Doodle hailing his "super-efficient" ambulance service.
On May 9, 2017, a Google Doodle was featured honoring the 181st birthday of Ferdinand Monoyer. He was a French ophthalmologist who in 1872 introduced the dioptre, the reciprocal of focal length in metres, as a unit for lens power. Its use greatly simplifies calculations when combining lenses. He devised an eye chart where every row represents a different lens power, from smallest to largest. A close look at the Doodle may reveal to the reader a tribute to Monoyer: his name, hidden in the chart.
On June 22, 2017, to commemorate the 117th birthday of animator Oskar Fischinger, Google released an interactive fullscreen Doodle that let users create their own animations by tapping on the screen. The user could then choose to share it to social media. The game was accessible by tapping on 2 play buttons.
On August 11, 2017, the 44th anniversary of DJ Kool Herc's pioneering use of the hip hop break, the Google Doodle allowed users to use a double turntable to act as a hip-hop DJ.
On September 4, 2017, to commemorate the 83rd birthday of Russian baritone singer Eduard Khil, Google added a video doodle that featured an animated Eduard Khil singing "I am very glad, as I'm finally returning back home", known globally as the "Trololo" song.
On December 4, 2017, Google celebrated 50 years of kids' coding languages with an Interactive Doodle.
On December 8, 2017, Google commemorated the 287th birthday of biologist Jan Ingenhousz with a Doodle.
On January 29, 2018, Google celebrated Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng on what would have been her 65th birthday.
On May 3, 2018, Google celebrated the work of Georges Méliès by making a doodle that encompassed his famous work like A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage. The doodle is also the first google doodle that was shown in 360-degrees format, with the viewer being able to rotate the video to give them different points of view.
On May 16, 2018, Google celebrated Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka.
On June 10, 2018, Google celebrated the history of garden gnomes by releasing an interactive Doodle where the player can use a catapult to launch their clay gnomes into the furthest reach of their garden.
On September 15, 2018, for India, Google commemorated Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya's 158th Birthday, on which day India celebrates Engineer's day.
On September 21, 2018, a stop-motion video Google doodle celebrating Fred Rogers was created in collaboration with Fred Rogers productions, The Fred Rogers center, and BixPix entertainment.
On October 30, 2018, for Halloween, Google added a multiplayer game called Great Ghoul Duel, featuring two teams of ghosts racing to collect spirits and steal them from the other team. Games can support up to 8 players, and users could create custom invite links or match with random users across the globe. Great Ghoul Duel was the first Doodle to support multiplayer over the internet.
On November 6, 2018, for the United States elections, Google changed their logo to Go Vote.
On November 11, 2018, Google celebrated the 58th posthumous birthday of Christy Essien-Igbokwe, who was a Nigerian musician and actress.
On March 7, 2019, Google celebrated Olga Ladyzhenskaya, a Russian mathematician.
On March 21, 2019, Google celebrated German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach by creating the first Doodle that uses artificial intelligence to make music. When a button is pressed, the Doodle uses machine learning to harmonize a user-created melody into Bach's signature music style.
On July 16–20, 2019, Google celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing by NASA where Neil Armstrong became the first man on the Moon.
On August 12, 2019, for India, Google commemorated Vikram Sarabhai's 100th birthday. He is internationally regarded as the Father of the Indian Space Program.
On December 9–10, 2019, the interactive Google doodle game celebrated the Mexican card game Lotería.