Tag Archives: Google doodle

Want to learn more about this year’s holiday-themed Google doodle?

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On Thursday the holiday-themed Google doodle you see right now was unveiled to the masses.  This year was rife with all kinds of Google doodles (from Pac-Man to UFOs), but this one’s being touted as the “most ambitious one yet.” Chief Google doodler Michael Lopez (yes, that is a real position) headed this year’s festive doodle with a team of four other artists.  It took them over 250 hours to complete the 17 interactive portraits of holiday scenes. Originally, the plan was to unveil the doodle in stages over three days, but at the last minute Google execs decided that it’d be best to push out the doodle in one piece and keep it up for two-and-a-half days.  Lopez and his team rushed to make it happen, and they managed to put it up just in time around 9am Thursday morning.  The majority of the holiday scenes focus on food, dance, architecture, and textile from all around the world. Google estimates that it has created over 900 doodles since 1998, with approximately 270 of them running in 2010.  Of all the doodles thus far, this one seems to be the one that most diverges from spelling out the search engine’s name.  Can you find where it says “Google” there?  It’s very subtle.  Anyway, can’t wait to see what Lopez has in store for us next year!

[Via WSJ]

Best Google doodle yet: it’s Pac-Man!

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Last weekend the Internet was treated with a fun little game called Pac-Man.  The guys and gals at Google HQ thought it’d be fun to turn the Google logo into a full-fledged game of Pac-Man to celebrate the game’s 30th anniversary.  This was the real deal–the game included all 256 levels, the ghosts, the fruits, the wakka wakka sound, and the kill screen in the final level.  There was even an “insert coin” button in the place of “I’m Feeling Lucky” that when pressed once started the game, and when pressed a second time introduced Ms. Pac-man and allowed for a 2-player mode (played with the WASD keys).  And check out what the playable doodle did to productivity in America on the Friday it was introduced (according to RescueTime Blog): the average user spent 36 more seconds on Google.com; the game consumed 4,819,352 hours of time; $120,483,800 in lost productivity.  “For that same cost, you could hire all 19,835 Google employees, from [founders] Larry and Sergey down to their janitors, and get 6 weeks of their time.”  Now that’s impressive (and scary).

And with all that said I bring good news!  Although the Pac-Man Google doodle was taken down after the weekend, the game has not been wiped from Google’s server.  Head over to google.com/pacman to play whenever you want!  But try to get your work done first, hm?  Aw, who am I kidding?  Get your wakka wakka action on right now!

[Via CNET; RescueTimeBlog]

Google: Happy Birthday, H.G. Wells!

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And the Google doodles have led up to this, a celebration of what would have been author H.G. Wells’ 146th birthday.  From the “unexplained phenomena” and the mysterious phrase “all your “O” belong to us,” to the “crop circles,” and now to a scene from H.G. Wells’ famous story War of the Worlds, Google has played us all.  Was the Google-plex infiltrated by aliens from another planet?  Was Google planning to unveil a new logo or a new product or service?  Were they attempting to show the general public and corporations alike the power of the Google doodle and how its changes can support advertisements for movies and so on?  NOPE.

Google has officially stated today in a blog post that all the mysterious doodles have led to up to this one event, the birthday of H.G. Wells, and all of the doodles relate to his War of the Worlds.  “Inspiration for innovation in technology and design can come from lots of places; we wanted to celebrate H.G. Wells as an author who encouraged fantastical thinking about what is possible, on this planet and beyond. And maybe have some fun while we were doing it.”  Yeah, by fun you mean having bloggers like me and crazy alien theorists like the rest of us postulate for days on end thinking about a possible explanation.  (Although things started to become clear with the second doodle; the coordinates Google posted on their Twitter page pointed to Horsell Commons, the initial place where the aliens landed in Wells’ novel.)  Google puts a cap on this solved mystery and leaves us with this: “The invasion of the logo by alien crafts and pods makes our series complete, but you’ll have to read the book to find out how Wells’ story really ends.”

Well played Google, well played.

Update:  It still doesn’t explain Google’s Street View image of these UFOs flying over London!  Muhahah….

[Via Telegraph.uk; GoogleBlog]