by Zakary Venturo

Created on: September 23, 2010

Google has turned doodles into a phenomena. Celebrating everything from Sesame Street, Pacman, and Einstein’s birthday. A doodle from Google is quite a bit like an evolution of the guest star appearance on a variety show, Internet style. Most often, clicking the doodle serves up search results related to the topic which inspired the doodle in the first place.

Larry Page and Sergey Bin, Google co-founders, posted the original Google doodle. It was meant as a spoof on the “whole out of the office” idea. The first doodle was pretty plain, just the Google Logo superimposed over the top of the Burning Man, indicating the co-founders were attending this annual event that takes place in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada.

User response was overwhelmingly positive. Google began thinking it wanted to create special holiday logos for its homepage. Dennis Hwang, an intern in 2000 and now a Google webmaster,  was given the first Official Doodle project. Since then, those snappy variations of the Google logo have went from simple static pictures into incredible feats of artistic engineering.

There is no set schedule, making the advent of a doodle a surprise. While the primary purpose of the Google homepage is search, these doodles often end up becoming the destination for surfers when they appear. When Google transformed its logo into a playable variation of Pacman, statistics came out days later proving the doodle negatively impacted productivity.

Today Google has a team of five people dedicated to keeping their cult following happy. Chief doodler Michael Lopez, and doodlers Susie Sahim, Jennifer Hom, Ryan Germick, and Mike Dutton. There job is to take the Google Logo and transform it into an exciting, even interactive, spotlight on topics Google finds interesting.

Sometimes a doodle is so popular Google archives the page as a fully functional homepage alternative. The Google Pacman, for instance, has a permanent home Chrome browser for setting a favorite doodle as part of the homepage. There are also plug ins for both FireFox and the Chrome browser for setting a favorite doodle as part of the homepage.

Doodles help make the Google homepage the destination, as a opposed to being just a transition, on the web. What started as a spoof has transformed into highly interactive, fun, and eagerly awaited experience for Googlers. It also gives Google a branding distinction far beyond its power in search, even drawing in those who typically use a different search engine. It might be fun, quirky, and even entertaining, but doodles have become big business for Google.

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