Doodles are the fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists.
How did the idea for doodles originate?
In 1998, before the company was even incorporated, the concept of the doodle was born when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. They placed a stick figure drawing behind the 2nd "o" in the word, Google, and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were "out of office.". While the first doodle was relatively simple, the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was born.
Two years later in 2000, Larry and Sergey asked current webmaster Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day. It was so well received by our users that Dennis was appointed Google's chief doodler and doodles started showing up more and more regularly on the Google homepage. In the beginning, the doodles mostly celebrated familiar holidays; nowadays, they highlight a wide array of events and anniversaries from the Birthday of John James Audubon to the Ice Cream Sundae.
Over time, the demand for doodles has risen in the U.S. and internationally. Creating doodles is now the responsibility of a team of talented illlustrators (we call them doodlers) and engineers. For them, creating doodles has become a group effort to enliven the Google homepage and bring smiles to the faces of Google users around the world.
31 January 2016
30 January 2016
Amrita Sher-Gil’s 103rd Birthday
Vivid color, graceful forms, and bold strokes mark the truly remarkable life and work of Indian painter, Amrita Sher-Gil. Today's Doodle honors the "Indian Frida Kahlo," who left no holds barred in her work, or in her life. Her paintings speak volumes of her passionate lifestyle and relentless desire to express herself through her canvasses.
Sher-Gil studied and practiced in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where she got her start as an artist and life consummate bohemian. Over time, her work became a clear salute to the feminine form, and Sher-Gil into an uncompromising talent.
28 January 2016
Hidetsugu Yagi’s 130th Birthday
Today we celebrate Hidetsugu Yagi's 130th birthday, and thank him for keeping our television and radio signal coming in loud and clear. Because of the Yagi antenna, radios and televisions can receive stronger signals from a specific direction, which helps avoid interference from surrounding signals.
Hidetsugu Yagi was a Japanese electrical engineer. He and his colleague Shintaro Uda developed and spread the technology for this antenna together, which is why the full name is the Yagi-Uda antenna. Their invention was patented in 1926 and is used today on millions of houses throughout the world for radio and television reception. If you look outside, you can probably see one or two of these right in your neighborhood—maybe even on your own roof!
27 January 2016
Beatrice Tinsley’s 75th Birthday
Today’s homepage celebrates the scientific genius of Beatrice Tinsley, whose work in cosmology and astrophysics made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the universe and the way galaxies behave within it. Despite her enormous intellect—she completed her Ph.D and wrote an “extraordinary and profound” dissertation on the evolution of galaxies in only two years—Tinsley was initially overlooked in the male-dominated world of astronomy. She eventually made her way to Yale University and in 1978 became a professor of astronomy and the chairman of the Conference on Cosmology’s organizing committee. January 27, 2016 would have been her 75th birthday.
26 January 2016
India Republic Day 2016
Deep within the massive Thar Desert, a unique group of guards dutifully patrols the India-Pakistan border. But they’re not, as you might expect, stationed on foot.
Each guard, a member of India’s Border Security Force, rides high above the ground on a stately camel. And each year, without fail, a caravan of these mounted troops is “deployed” to Rajpath in New Delhi to march in the Republic Day parade, a festive celebration of the Indian constitution. The presence of these guards is now a long-standing tradition; this is the 66th year in which the BSF camel contingent will appear before all of India.
26 January 2016
90th Anniversary of the first demonstration of Television
On this day 90 years ago, an eccentric Scottish inventor herded a small group of Royal Institution scientists into his London apartment and showed them the future.
John Logie Baird, who’d been working on a “televisor” apparatus for much of his career, was the first person to publicly demonstrate the system that would spawn the modern-day television. His discovery sent shockwaves through the scientific community, and certified his legacy as one of the 20th century’s great innovators.
26 January 2016
Australia National Day 2016 - D4G AU Winner - Ineka Voigt
Doodle for Google Australia Winner 2015. For the last 10 years we’ve been running the Doodle 4 Google program in Australia -- an opportunity for school-age artists to apply their own personal artistic vision to the Google logo and transform it into a work of art. The winners then have their artwork placed on the Google Australia homepage for all to see. It’s like a young artist’s work being pinned on the biggest fridge in the country.
21 january 2016
Grandfather's Day 2016 (Poland)
Every year on January 21st, people across Poland take a moment to honor their grandparents, so we thought we’d take a moment, too. We don’t presume to know your babci or dziadek, but hope, whether they’re your family’s best storyteller, the source of Poland’s finest pierogi or simply a cherished memory, that today’s Doodle by artist Lydia Nichols helps bring them to mind.
22 January 2016
Wilbur Scoville’s 151st Birthday
People have known about the tongue-burning, tear-inducing qualities of peppers long before Columbus reached the Americas. Before Wilbur Scoville, however, no one knew how to measure a pepper's “heat”. The doodle team thought his work in this field—and the development of his eponymous Scoville Scale—deserved some recognition.
Born in Bridgeport Connecticut on January 22nd, 1865, Wilbur Lincoln Scoville was a chemist, award-winning researcher, professor of pharmacology and the second vice-chairman of the American Pharmaceutical Association. His book, The Art of Compounding, makes one of the earliest mentions of milk as an antidote for pepper heat. He is perhaps best remembered for his organoleptic test, which uses human testers to measure pungency in peppers.
21 January 2016
Grandmother's Day 2016 (Poland)
Every year on January 21st, people across Poland take a moment to honor their grandparents, so we thought we’d take a moment, too. We don’t presume to know your babci or dziadek, but hope, whether they’re your family’s best storyteller, the source of Poland’s finest pierogi or simply a cherished memory, that today’s Doodle by artist Lydia Nichols helps bring them to mind.
21 January 2016
Naguib El Rihani’s 127th Birthday
Naguib el-Rihani was an Egyptian actor. He was born in Bab El Shereya, Cairo, Egypt to a father from Iraq by the name of Elias El Rihani who worked as a horse expert and trader and eventually settled in Cairo, where he met and married Naguib's mother, a Coptic Egyptian woman from Cairo, (he was one of three sons). He was educated in the French school "Les Frères" in Cairo.
He had a turbulent marriage with Badia Masabni, a Levantine actress and dancer who settled in Cairo, and established her famous cabaret, "Casino Badia." They separated before his death. He died at the age of 60 years in Cairo of typhus, while filming his last film, "Ghazal Al Banat"
21 January 2016
Lola Flores’ 93rd Birthday
Today's doodle displays the beautiful visage of "La Faraona", captured in a moment of fierce passion. Recognize those sparkling eyes and perfectly poised hands? She is the beloved Spanish dancer, singer, and actress Lola Flores.
Flores’ legacy lives on in her many films, operas and songs—which are characteristically defiant and as powerful as one of her masterful flamenco performances.
19 January 2016
José Alfredo Jiménez’s 90th Birthday
Today’s homepage features the beloved Mexican folk musician José Alfredo Jiménez, who was born in the state of Guanajuato on January 19th, 1926. The astoundingly prolific mariachi, whose songs have rung out at parties and mended broken hearts for over half a century, would have celebrated his 90th birthday today. Feliz cumpleaños, José.
19 January 2016
Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s 127th Birthday
Gracing the face of every Swiss 50 franc bill is the straightforward gaze of a dark-eyed woman. Behind this serious portrait lies one of Switzerland's most colorful artists: Sophie Taeuber-Arp, whose 127th birthday we celebrate today!
Taeuber-Arp was a Swiss artist, designer, architect and dancer. Notably, she’s one of the most important artists of geometric abstraction – her minimalistic style, which is reflected in her textile artwork, marionettes, interiors, drawings, paintings, reliefs and sculptures, makes her distinguished amongst other artists of the early 20th century. Together with her husband, Dadaist artist Hans Arp, she permanently moved to France in the late 1920’s.
18 January 2016
Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2016
Today's doodle honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister, community activist, philosopher and humanitarian. His leadership of the American Civil Rights movement, Nobel Peace Prize for non-violent civil disobedience in the face of racial injustice, and eventual martyrdom for the cause, cements his place as a hero for peace and justice worldwide.
One of his most powerful tools was his ability to communicate poignant truths in beautiful and moving speeches, which guest artist Richie Pope highlighted in our doodle today. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. moved our country forward by committing to bettering the lives of American citizens, no matter their race. He told us, "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." Today we're inspired to keep working towards a better future with grace and optimism.
15 January 2016: Teacher's Day 2016 (Thailand)
16 January 2016: Teacher's Day 2016 (Venezuela)
“A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present” -Confucius
Teachers are our mentors, friends, and catalysts. They’re the wild, eager sparks that can, with a word, set our passions ablaze. Not quite parents, they nevertheless raise us to be the very best versions of ourselves. And their impressions last lifetimes, as the lessons we’ve learned are passed down to others, like inheritances of wisdom. Today, let’s celebrate teachers, one of the noblest and most selfless of callings all across the world.
Happy Teacher’s Day!
16 January 2016
Taiwan Elections 2016
General elections were held in Taiwan on Saturday, 16 January 2016 to elect the 14th President and vice president of the Republic of China, and all 113 members of the 9th Legislative Yuan.[1] Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected President with 56% of the vote.
12 January 2015
Charles Perrault’s 388th Birthday
What's that story, with the glass slipper and the pumpkin that turns into a carriage? How about the one where a princess falls into a deep sleep when she pricks her hand on a spindle? We owe the Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty narratives we've known since childhood to Charles Perrault, the 17th-century French author and academician. Perrault was born in Paris 388 years ago today, and spent most of his life in the court of Louis XIV. He began writing his famous stories only in his late sixties, after having retired.
11 January 2016
Alice Paul’s 131st Birthday
“I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.” -- Alice Paul
When the 19th Amendment to the Constitution became law in August of 1920, women finally won the right to vote after a very long fight. Many suffragists played vital roles in this victory, but none more so than Alice Paul. Paul first made a name for herself by organizing a successful women’s suffrage parade the day before Woodrow Wilson’s first inauguration. Paul thought that public demonstrations were the smartest ways to achieve voting rights. That belief put her at odds with the National American Woman Suffrage Association, so she founded her own organization, the National Women’s Party.
09 January 2016
41st Anniversary of the Discovery of the Mountain of the Butterflies
In 1975, after a decades long search that involved thousands of volunteers and spanned an entire continent, Ken Brugger and Catalina Trail unlocked one of nature’s most beautiful mysteries: the overwintering place of the monarch butterfly. Led by a team of Canadian Zoologists under Fred Urquhart, the couple followed clues left by tagged butterflies that had strayed or fallen on their migratory journeys south. The scene, in which millions of monarchs cling to oyamel trees in Mexico’s easternmost Sierra Madre Mountains, would have been overwhelming. “They swirled through the air like autumn leaves,” said Urquhart after his first visit, “carpet[ing] the ground in their flaming myriads on the Mexican mountainside.”
