Saul Bass’ birthday, Malaysia election, Earth Day, Discovery of X-rays, Valentine’s Day, Grimm’s Fairy Tales and end of the Mayan Calendar — the possibilities for Google’s doodles never end. Today’s doodle celebrates Maurice Sendak’s 85th birthday, who wrote the children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are.”
Google began running doodles on its homepage in 2000, and their popularity has increased over the years. The homepage has doodles created by the team of illustrators and engineers called doodlers. The “About Google Doodles” Web page says of the doodlers, “For them, creating doodles has become a group effort to enliven the Google homepage and bring smiles to the faces of Google users around the world.”
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google in 1998, and they were also the creators behind the first doodle. The two attended a Burning Man concert that year, and as a joke they placed a stick-figure man behind the second “o” in Google. It was a simple rendering that was “intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were ‘out of the office.’ ”
Google began to introduce more doodles in 2000, and they became more common as their popularity grew. More than 1,000 doodles have appeared on Google’s homepage worldwide.
Abby Stevens is an intern for the DeseretNews.com Faith and Family sections. She is a recent graduate of Brigham Young University–Idaho. Contact her at astevens@deseretdigital.com.