Who says Google is all work and no play!

We have all become familiar to the special collection of Google logos commemorating individuals and events from around the world known as Google Doodles. Google subsidiary YouTube has also featured some custom logos to highlight special events occurring on the site, these have been unofficially nicknamed “Yoodles”

They first appeared in 1998, as an out-of-office message honouring the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, which Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had gone off to attend.
One of my personal favourites was the Les Paul doodle where users could strum the guitar in an attempt to produce a mini guitar solo… well I did!

The Doodles have continued to get more imaginative, including the Barrel Role tribute to the Nintendo video game Star Fox 64. By typing ‘do a barrel roll’ into the search bar and the results page will spin 360 degrees. The barrel roll is a small showcase for the CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets 3), the latest CSS version used to design web pages.

Two of Google’s most innovative search projects were carried out by Ricardo Cabello, also known as Mr Doob… not “the dude” from The Big Lebowski (easily confused). Cabello, who originated from Barcelona, is a wizard in HTML5 which is the new language for structuring and presenting content for the web and something that Google and its Chrome browser have been experimenting with.

A stand out 5 min time zapper is Google Gravity, if you type the phrase into the search bar everything tumbles to the bottom of the screen and can then be flung about with the mouse. Mr Doob was also responsible for creating the Google Sphere which was commissioned by Google and based on his own idea. Google Sphere is most effective when performing an image search and turns your results into a swirling sphere of pictures.

I have added all of the URL’s above, so make some tea and take 10 minutes to enjoy and admire the playful side to Google.