Google has announced that its Doodles will soon be available on smartphones running Android 2.0 OS and above, and on iPhones with at least iOS 3.0.
The concept of Google Doodle was launched in 1998 when the search company's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin put up a stick figure behind the second ‘o' of Google to signify that they were out of office and at the Burning Man arts festival that is held in the Nevada desert. A few Doodles in the past have featured on mobiles and the first such was for the 2008 Olympics.
The Doodle team has created over 300 Doodles for Google.com in the United States and over 700 have been designed internationally.
Every country in which Google is popular has had a very culturally specific Doodle at some point or other. These Doodles are always styled according to the colours and designs that are indicative of that country's.
Google accepts Doodles made by its users and submitted to proposals@google.com. The company also started a Doodle designing contest in India a few years back. The contest - Doodle 4 Google - invites school children to design the Google logo in their very own style based on a specific theme.
This year's winner is Akshay Raj of St. Aloysius High School in Mangalore. He created a Doodle on the theme ‘Technologically and Naturally Growing India'.
According to Google, Doodles are meant to celebrate interesting events and anniversaries that reflect the company's personality and love for innovation. People now look forward to Google's Doodle when the next significant event approaches. Other than the usual holidays and festivals, even the lives of famous scientists and artists are celebrated through Google Doodles.
While Google has made it a unique and fun way of celebrating events, most companies would never tinker with their corporate logos.
Doodles, however, help Google break the monotony of its otherwise plain search page, and an interesting Doodle also instigates people to search the keywords associated with that Doodle.
Some times, the Google logo gets completely overcome by the Doodle so that the word Google isn't at all visible. On September 30, some of you might have noticed a Doodle celebrating the Flintstones and the word Google was lost in it. However, this doesn't seem to bother Google much.
People might also have noted that rival search engine Bing uses stunning images to give a fresh look to its site every day. Even Google tried to do that (and the option still exists for users who sign into iGoogle,) but the service hasn't really caught on.
One reason for this could be that iGoogle pages have to be customised while Doodles have a surprise element that users enjoy.
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