The Google Doodle: entertaining users since 1998
Posted by Lauren Potgieter on 03 Jun 2010 | Tagged as: Just for Fun
I do not know if I am in the minority here, but I really enjoy seeing the different types of Google Doodles that are regularly placed on the Google home page. It does not matter to me that most of the time you cannot see the Google logo itself as we all know it’s Google, and I am sure that many of us learn a little something new when we scroll over the Google Doodle, interested to see what that particular Google Doodle means.
The first Google Doodle was shown to users in 1998. The Doodle, which depicted the Burning Man logo behind the second O of the Google logo, was placed there for a particular reason – as a type of notification to users that if, for any reason, the server would crash – that users would know that Larry Page and Sergey Brin would not be able to correct the problem until they were back from the annual festival. Since then, the Google Doodle remained, and over the past twelve years there have been thousands of Google Doodles for users entertainment and informational purposes.
The Google Doodle is pretty and interesting to look at, but it also serves a purpose. If you click on the logo itself, you will be taken to a list of results pertaining to that result, letting you find out more about that particular topic. Google Doodles celebrate various topics such a famous peoples birthdays, certain public holidays, days of commemoration and the history of some of our most popular brands that we know and love.
One of the most popular Google Doodle inceptions was the Pac Man Google Doodle that was on the Google home page on the 21st of May this year to celebrate 30 of its launch. As much as users thoroughly enjoyed this incredibly interactive Doodle where you could play the Pac Man game on the Google logo, it also distracted many users and was said to gobble up nearly five million hours of work time. The day that the Pac Man Doodle was placed on Google, time spent on the page went up and so did the amount of searches, but not as much as they thought. They believe that this was owing to the fact that many did not know that you could play the game on the logo but merely look at it.
There are a variety of Google Doodle competitions which you can enter in order to have your Google Doodle on the home page for the day and this competition is open to any age. Recently, a third grader won one of the Doodle 4 Google competitions and received prize money which would be contributed to her university scholarship.
The Google Doodle does not serve a functional purpose, but is rather there is the form of recognition and remembrance. Sometimes thoughtful, other times entertaining, a Google Doodle makes a nice change to the Google image that we see every day. Below are three of my favourite Google Doodles – what are yours?
