List of Google Doodles
Encyclopedia
The Google Doodle is an artistic version of the Google logo
Google logo
Google has had several logos since its renaming from BackRub. The current official Google logo was designed by Ruth Kedar, and is a wordmark based on the Catull typeface....

. In 1998, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 used the first Google Doodle
of the Burning Man Festival, designed by Google's founders, Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....

 and Larry Page
Larry Page
Lawrence "Larry" Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. As of April 4, 2011, he is also the chief executive of Google, as announced on January 20, 2011...

, posted on google.com
Google search
Google or Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web, receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services....

 notifying users of their absence in case Google's servers crashed. Since 2000, Dennis Hwang
Dennis Hwang
Dennis Hwang, or Hwang Jeong-mok, is a graphic artist who designs the festive logos for Google on special days.- Biography :...

, now Google's international webmaster has been designing the Google Doodles, but designing the Doodles is only about 20 percent of his job. All Google doodles are available at: http://www.google.com/logos/index.html

Selected from 1998-1999

The first few Google Doodles were simple and infrequent. These are all the doodles between 30 August 1998 to 25 December 1999
  • August 30, 1998 "The Burning Man" (See above)
  • October 29, 1998 Google used a new logo while they were in an open beta release.
  • November 26, 1998 Google's simple first Thanksgiving Doodle
  • October 31, 1999 Google's first Halloween
    Halloween
    Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

     doodle and first Doodle since switching to the new logo that lasted over 10 years
  • November 23, 1999 A Thanksgiving doodle.
  • November 30, 1999 An "Uncle Sam
    Uncle Sam
    Uncle Sam is a common national personification of the American government originally used during the War of 1812. He is depicted as a stern elderly man with white hair and a goatee beard...

     search" when you click on it, it takes you to a Google search page of the United States government.
  • December 25, 1999 A Christmas/Season's Greetings Doodle.

2000

  • May 14 - A Mother's Day doodle.
  • June 18 - A Father's Day doodle.
  • September 14–25 - Doodles of the 2000 Summer Olympics
    2000 Summer Olympics
    The Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

     featured a kangaroo. The rest of the logo remained the same, except for the two "O"'s, which were yellow and black to represent the Olympics Logo.

2003

  • February 14 - A Valentine's Day doodle with the two 'o's in the logo as hearts.
  • April 22 - An Earth Day doodle with the Moon below the logo and the aliens on the 'g' in the logo looking at Earth.

April 2009-2010

During 2009, an increasingly higher number of more intricate Google Doodles were made. Google Doodle represent events like holidays, anniversaries, or current events. Google holds an annual competition called Doodle 4 Google, in which children in grades K-12 to create a logo that Google will use as a Doodle for google.com
Google search
Google or Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web, receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services....

. This is a list of Google Doodles from April 2009 to the present.

On April 1, 2009, Google created a doodle to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol.

On October 7, 2009, Google featured a doodle of their logo as a barcode
Barcode
A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional . Later they evolved into rectangles,...

 to recognize the anniversary of its invention in 1948 by Bernard Silver
Bernard Silver
Bernard Silver was an early developer of barcode technology alongside Norman Joseph Woodland.Silver earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Drexel Institute of Technology in 1947...

.

On October 31, 2009, the Google page displayed a 4-step Halloween
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

 logo, showing a more and more chaotic display of sweets after the first 3 clicks, before redirecting the user to the search results page.

From November 4–10, 2009, Google featured a new picture of Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...

characters to celebrate the show's 40th anniversary.

On Wednesday, November 11, 2009, Google made a doodle for Veteran's Day, which featured a veteran and a policeman as the "l" and the "e".

On Friday, November 13, 2009, Google featured the moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

 as the second "o" in Google with the other letters appearing as water, to celebrate NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

's confirmation of significant amounts of water on the moon.

On Thursday, November 26, 2009 (Thanksgiving Day), Google featured the beloved Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...

comic strip characters Snoopy
Snoopy
Snoopy is an fictional character in the long-running comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. He is Charlie Brown's pet beagle. Snoopy began his life in the strip as a fairly conventional dog, but eventually evolved into perhaps the strip's most dynamic character—and among the most recognizable...

 & Woodstock
Woodstock (Peanuts)
Woodstock is a fictional character in Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts. He is Snoopy's closest friend and, after Snoopy, the most recognized non-human in the strip.-History:...

 cooking a Thanksgiving dinner. Chef Snoopy stood in for the Google "l", with Chef Woodstock in Snoopy's hat. That day also marked the birth date of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz
Charles M. Schulz
Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.-Early life and education:Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Schulz grew up in Saint Paul...

.

On Monday, January 4, 2010, Google honored Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...

, with an animation of an apple falling from a tree.

On Friday, February 12, 2010, Google featured the 2010 Olympic Games
2010 Winter Olympics
The 2010 Winter Olympics, officially the XXI Olympic Winter Games or the 21st Winter Olympics, were a major international multi-sport event held from February 12–28, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with some events held in the suburbs of Richmond, West Vancouver and the University...

 in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

, with various athletes and olympic symbols representing certain letters.

On Thursday, March 4, 2010, Google featured a Vivaldi logo on the 332nd anniversary of his birth.

On Sunday, March 14, 2010, Google created a Google Doodle to celebrate Pi Day
Pi Day
Pi Day is a holiday commemorating the mathematical constant π . Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 , since 3, 1 and 4 are the three most significant digits of π in the decimal form...

. It featured the Google logo laid over several circles and pi symbols.

On Thursday, April 1, 2010, Google jokingly changed their name (and logo) to "Topeka" for a day in response to the city of Topeka; Topeka, Kansas
Topeka, Kansas
Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...

 had unofficially changed its name to Google for the previous month (see Topeka, Kansas).

On Friday, April 2, 2010, Google created a doodle to celebrate the 205th birthday of Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...

.

On Saturday, April 24, 2010, Google created a doodle to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...

 launch by NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

.

On Friday, May 7, 2010, Google created a doodle to celebrate the 170th birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

.

On Friday, May 21, 2010, Google created a doodle to celebrate the 30th birthday of Pac-Man
Pac-Man
is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,...

. This also marks the first doodle to be fully interactive, as it is a fully functional rendition of the original Pac-Man game reshaped into the Google logo. The Pac-Man character can be moved by using the arrow keys on the user's keyboard. This also marks a the first time the "I'm feeling lucky" button has been altered as part of the doodle. The button's text was changed to "Insert Coin" which, when clicked on, starts the game in the logo. A second click adds the Ms. Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man is an arcade video game produced by Midway as an unauthorized sequel to Pac-Man. It was released in North America in 1981 and became one of the most popular video games of all time, leading to its adoption by Pac-Man licensor Namco as an official title...

 character as a second player, which can be controlled independently of Pac-Man via the W, A, S and D keys. Upon losing all 3 lives, the Google home page redirected to the search page for "PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary". On May 24, 2010, Google announced that it will keep the game permanent at http://www.google.com/pacman/.

In Thursday, May 27, 2010, the week after the Pac-Man doodle, Google announced its Doodle4Google
Doodle4Google
Doodle4Google is an annual competition held by Google to have children create a logo that will be featured on the Google homepage. In 2008 there was a competition in Sweden.-History:Google features logos on their homepage, usually for public holidays...

 winner, Makenzie Melton, a third grader from El Dorado Springs
El Dorado Springs, Missouri
El Dorado Springs is the largest city in Cedar County, Missouri, United States. The population was 3,775 at the 2000 census. The name is commonly shortened to El Dorado or just El Do.-Geography:El Dorado Springs is located at ....

, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

. She won $15,000 for a college scholarship, $25,000 for her school to have a computer lab, and a netbook
Netbook
Netbooks are a category of small, lightweight, legacy-free, and inexpensive laptop computers.At their inception in late 2007 as smaller notebooks optimized for low weight and low cost — netbooks omitted certain features , featured smaller screens and keyboards, and offered reduced computing...

.

On Saturday, June 5, 2010, Dennis Gabor
Dennis Gabor
Dennis Gabor CBE, FRS was a Hungarian-British electrical engineer and inventor, most notable for inventing holography, for which he later received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics....

, the inventor of holograms, was honored in the doodle. An example of a hologram replaced the Google Logo

On Friday, June 11, 2010, the 2010 FIFA World Cup
2010 FIFA World Cup
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010...

 was commemorated by a Google doodle. At the Same day, another doodle was includuded for Jacques Cousteau's 100th Birthday.

On Tuesday, June 29, 2010, the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...

 was celebrated by a Google doodle. Saint-Exupéry was a French author and aviator best-known for his book The Little Prince
The Little Prince
The Little Prince , first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ....

, who is featured in the doodle.

On Sunday, July 4, 2010, the Fourth of July and the birthday of Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to...

 were celebrated with a Rube Goldberg machine
Rube Goldberg machine
A Rube Goldberg machine, contraption, device, or apparatus is a deliberately over-engineered or overdone machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction...

 that lit a firework that exploded into the Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 logo
Logo
A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...

.

On Tuesday, July 6, 2010, the birth of Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....

 was celebrated with a gold Google logo wrapped with vines, flowers, and a painting of herself in her painting styles.

On Sunday, July 11, 2010, the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final
2010 FIFA World Cup Final
The 2010 FIFA World Cup Final was a football match that took place on 11 July 2010 at Soccer City in Johannesburg, South Africa, to determine the winner of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Spain defeated the Netherlands 1–0 with a goal from Andrés Iniesta four minutes from the end of extra time...

 was commemorated by a Google doodle showing the match venue, Soccer City
FNB Stadium
Soccer City, known as FNB Stadium for commercial purposes, is a stadium located in Nasrec, the Soweto area of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is located next to the South African Football Association headquarters where both the FIFA offices and the Local Organising Committee for the 2010 FIFA World...

 in Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...

.

On Saturday, July 24, 2010, the 150th birthday of Alphonse Mucha was commemorated by a Google doodle in the style of his artwork.

On Thursday, August 12, 2010, the 71st anniversary of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...

was commemorated by a Google doodle of the main characters dancing on the yellow brick road, with the Emerald City in the background.

On Monday, August 30, 2010, the 213th anniversary of the birth of Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...

, the British author of Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...

, was marked by a Google doodle of a darkened room with ghostly portraits on the wall and a shadowy figure in a doorway.

On Saturday, September 4, 2010, the 25th anniversary of the discovery of fullerene
Fullerene
A fullerene is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and they resemble the balls used in association football. Cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes...

s was celebrated by using an interactively rotatable fullerene C60 as the second 'o' in their logo.

On Tuesday, September 7, 2010, Google added an interactive doodle. The word "Google" is made up of a bunch of circles. As you move your mouse toward the circles they scatter about the screen and attempt to return to form the logo. Google said the doogle represents "speed, fun and interaction, as we believe the research should be carried out on our engine".

On Wednesday, September 8, 2010, Google's logo starts off as white text. As you enter a query the logo's text fills in its color. The doodle acts as if you typed the word "Google", including a large cursor between the letters as you type. This was an allusion to the new Google Feature released the same day: Instant Search.

On Monday, September 27, 2010, the 12th birthday anniversary of Google was marked by a new "doodle" featuring a birthday cake and a candle. The birthday cake was painted by 89-year-old Los Angeles artist Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate...

 and has started to appear across all major versions of the search engine.

On Thursday, September 30, 2010, the 50th anniversary of The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...

was marked by a new multicolored "doodle" featuring the main characters of the popular cartoon series in their Stone-Age setting.

On Friday, October 8, 2010, to mark what would have been the day before the 70th birthday of John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

, a 32-second "Video doodle" appeared on the google homepage. The "E" of google was shaped like a play button. The video was a simple animation that was accompanied by Lennon's song "Imagine
Imagine (song)
"Imagine" is a song written and performed by the English musician John Lennon. It is the opening track on his album Imagine, released in 1971...

". The logo remained live on Saturday, October 9, 2010.

On Saturday, 16 October 2010, to mark what would have been the 156th birthday of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

, a Google doodle was produced in his honour, featuring a portrait from his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine...

.

On Sunday, 31 October 2010, to celebrate Halloween
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

, a Google doodle was produced with a classic Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo is an American media franchise based around several animated television series and related works produced from 1969 to the present day. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears in 1969...

 adventure spread out over five frames.

On Monday, 8 of November 2010, the Google logo was covered by using an X-ray radiation to celebrate the 115th anniversary of the discovery of the X-ray.

On Thursday, 11 November 2010, for Veteran's Day, the flag of the United States replaced the 'e' in the Google logo.

On Saturday, 13 November 2010, to celebrate what would have been the 160th birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

 based on Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...

, one of Stevenson's most famous works.

On Tuesday, 23 November 2010, a logo featuring artwork and food by Ina Garten
Ina Garten
Ina Rosenberg Garten is an American author, host of the Food Network program Barefoot Contessa, and former White House nuclear policy analyst...

 was featured for Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...



On Thursday, 25 November 2010, a logo featured for Nikolay Pirogov.

On Friday, 24 December 2010, a logo which replaced the letters with pictures of Christmas culture was featured for Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...

. The logo remained live on Saturday, December 25, 2010 for Christmas Day.

On Friday, 31 December 2010, a logo with "MMXI" (the Roman numerals for 2011) replacing the letters "oogl" was featured for New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...

. The logo remained on the main page on Saturday, January 1, 2011 for New Year's Day
New Year's Day
New Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome...

.

External links

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