Google's first Doodle was an out-of-office note for Burning Man
The first Google Doodle, in 1998, was a Burning Man figure that Larry Page and Sergey Brin placed on the logo to warn users they were away at the Nevada festival in case the servers crashed. By 2024, Google's team of Doodlers had produced more than 5,000 of them.
At first, Doodles were static images with tooltips rather than links. Marketing employee Susan Wojcicki championed early ones, including an alien landing, and cartoonist Ian David Marsden drew them as a contractor until 2000, when public relations officer Dennis Hwang was asked to design one for Bastille Day. A dedicated staff of illustrators, engineers and artists, known as Doodlers, has run them ever since.
The first animated Doodle marked Halloween on October 31, 2000. Interactivity arrived on May 21, 2010, with a playable Pac-Man logo for the arcade game's 30th anniversary, built with Namco. An Insert Coin button replaced I'm Feeling Lucky, a second press added Ms. Pac-Man for a second player, and an estimated 1 billion people played before popular demand earned it a permanent page of its own.
Other firsts followed quickly. On October 8, 2010, a short animation set to Imagine marked what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday, Google's first video Doodle. The first live-action one, on April 15, 2011, honoured Charlie Chaplin's 122nd birthday, with the Doodle team playing every part. A strummable electric guitar for Les Paul's 96th birthday that June let US users record 30-second clips, and it stayed up an extra day because people loved it.
Many Doodles now recur every year, from Valentine's Day to the Olympic Games, and some appear only on particular countries' home pages. By 2014 there had been over 2,000, often featuring guest artists, and the Doodlers themselves have included artists such as Eric Carle and Ekua Holmes.
Source: Google Doodle
