GOOGLE DEBUTS INTERACTIVE OLYMPIC-THEMED DOODLES
With the Socialympics drawing to a close, Google’s homepage has come alive with interactive doodles. Conceived over a decade ago, Google doodles have become an ingrained part of its brand. Users now expect to see a creative, new graphic on the search engine’s homepage every morning.
It began the Olympics with sport-themed doodles, but, not to be outdone by Twitter’s grasp on the Games’ social media, Google cranked its game up a notch. On 7 August, it debuted a hurdler that you, the Google user, could see safely, or catastrophically, through the obstacle course that is a hurdles race.
Three days on, employers are dreading each new time-consuming doodle while office-workers worldwide are rejoicing at the fun-filled diversion. The hashtag #googledoodle reached an audience of 759,655 since yesterday.
Today’s doodle features a football goalkeeper charged with blocking progressively-harder penalty kicks. The javelin thrower of 6 August, the last static doodle, featured a small depiction of the Mars rover that NASA successfully deployed to the Red Planet in the corner of the image.
Google doodles have been evolving since their inception in 1998 as simple images super-imposed on the Google logo or replacing letters in the word with figures. The Olympic-themed interactive doodles are not the first of their kind, either. Some others include deep-sea diving in a submarine, playing a synthesizer or electric guitar and links to a cute Valentines-themed cartoon.