Google, the world’s most used search engine which has been ruling the digital world, celebrates its 25th birthday today.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s note on Birthday

Google CEO Sundar Pichai last month wrote a note as a blog with respect to the organization celebrating its 25th birthday.

Pichai shared a few considerations on the openings to AI to do things that matter on a much greater scale, reflecting on the first quarter century.

Pichai wrote, ‘This month, Google will celebrate our 25th birthday. It’s a huge privilege to reach this milestone, made possible by the people who use our products and challenge us to keep innovating, the hundreds of thousands of Googlers past and present who have given their talents to building those products, and our partners who believe in our mission as much as we do…It’s a time for some gratitude, and a moment to reflect.’

He further added, ‘An essential truth of innovation is that the moment you push the boundary of a technology, it soon goes from extraordinary to ordinary. That’s why Google has never taken our success for granted.’

Over the years, Google has evolved and gone through several major changes but its key functionality and focus has always been on search and the core business.

Unsurprisingly, the company celebrated its 25th birthday on (September 27) with a special Google Doodle.

The special Google Doodle commemorated all previous logos of the company over the last 25 years, a special way of marking the occasion and also educating millions of users across the globe about that special day.

In a way, an entire generation was born with the tech giant and has never known a world without it, which makes the occasion doubly special.

The First Ever Google Doodle

As Google celebrates its 25th birthday, let’s have a look at the first ever Google Doodle released by the company.

Google was originated by doctoral students Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Even before Google was incorporated, founders Page and Brin got the idea of Google Doodle.

In 1998, the founders played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

They placed a stick figure drawing behind the 2nd ‘o’ in the word, Google, and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were ‘out of office.’

While the first doodle was relatively simple, the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was born.

Two years later in 2000, Larry and Sergey asked current webmaster Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day. It was so well received by our users that Dennis was appointed Google’s chief doodler and Doodles started showing up more and more regularly on the Google homepage.

Wow, @Google's logo is 25 years old now! Take a look at how it's changed over the years. #Google25 pic.twitter.com/jPL6Q6UJVv

— Sha_zan (@SHAZTECHHD) September 26, 2023

The company wrote in its blog that, ‘Today’s Doodle celebrates Google’s 25th year. And while here at Google we’re oriented towards the future, birthdays can also be a time to reflect. Let’s take a walk down memory lane to learn how we were born 25 years ago.’

What is the history behind Google?

In the late 90s, they met in Stanford University’s computer science program, both realized that they shared a similar vision to build the World Wide Web a more open spot.

Then, Google was established on September 4, 1998, and on September 27, 1998, Google Inc. officially originated.

While the organization marked its birthday on September 4 for the initial seven years, later it chose to move the celebrations to September 27 to match with the declaration of the record number of pages that this search engine was indexing.

Evolution of Google and the logo

Since 1998, much has advanced including Google’s logo, as obvious in the present Doodle. But, the mission has steadfastly continued as before, that is to coordinate the global information and guarantee its general availability and utility.

Today, billions of individuals worldwide depend on Google to search, connection, career, play and much more. This doodle will be noticeable across the globe with the exception of a couple of districts including Russia.

The worldwide search engine’s existing CEO is Sundar Pichai, who succeeded Page on October 24, 2015. Meanwhile, Page had taken similar control over a position at Alphabet Inc.

On December 3, 2019, Pichai turned into the CEO of Alphabet as well.

Fun Facts about the Google Doodle

A carefully selected committee of Googlers from various backgrounds begin the process of choosing which Google Doodles will appear on the Google homepage in the coming year.

They begin meeting regularly in the summer and usually wrap up by late October. Hours of discussion and work each week takes place, all dedicated to making Doodle magic happen.

While Doodles are beloved inside Google and by many who visit the homepage, more goes into them than you might think.

1. The Doodle team receives about 7,000 submissions a year.

The team gets hundreds of requests every day from people who email [email protected], and Googlers are pitching their concepts all the time, too.

One really important part of this submission process is working with Local Doodle Managers who represent different global countries and clue the core team into what important moments and milestones will resonate the most on a local level. Not all Doodles display everywhere, some are specific to their regions, for example on India’s Independence Day and these country-specific teammates help manage these requests.

2. Google published its 5,000th Doodle in 2020

Google’s celebrated Slovakia’s Freedom and Democracy Day, the country’s annual holiday commemorating heroic efforts by local youth activists in 2020, which was its 5000th doodle.

3. Google’s public archive lets you check out every Doodle ever made.

Google’s public archive launched in December 2011, where you can read about each Doodle and learn about the topic at hand, and often read about the artist as well, there’s also a section for interactive Doodles you can revisit.

You can even check out the history of Doodles for any specific day.

4. The Doodles team has a set of principles for each Doodle

A major one is that Doodles should aim to delight and surprise people. Also, Doodles are never dedicated to someone who’s still alive, because person-focused Doodles are meant to honor someone’s lifetime achievements.

Doodles also never promote brands.

5. The first animated Doodle premiered on Halloween 2000

It was the work of guest artist Lorie Loeb. Halloween Doodles would go on to become an annual focus for animation and engineering feats.

Halloween 2000 Doodle, created by Lorie Loeb.

6. Doodles aren’t all entirely digital.

While plenty of artists use digital mediums to create Doodles, others start with sketches or paintings — or even other items — to create their Doodles.

7. Many Doodles are the work of multiple teams at Google.

For instance, the first AI-powered Doodle honoring Johann Sebastian Bach that came out in 2019 was the work of the engineering Doodle team and Google’s machine learning department.

8. The Halloween 2018 Doodle actually came out of a Googler hackathon.

The 2018 Halloween Doodle was a multiplayer game born out of a hackathon held for a week to work on it. By the end of the week, people were playing this really simple game for hours. So they set to work on the Doodle, which became a major engineering feat that took literal years to make.

A moment from the Halloween 2018 Doodle game.

9. The series of Champion Island game Doodles from 2021 had the longest production process

The Doodle — er, Doodles — launched as a series starting in July 2021 to celebrate the Olympics. It was originally supposed to debut the previous summer. But because COVID-19 delayed the entire Olympic games, the interactive game was also pushed back…a whole year.

With six sport mini games, 24 side quests, multiple endings and over three hours of gameplay, it’s the most expansive Doodle ever made. It even contains easter eggs for other Doodle games, like Magic Cat Academy and Pangolin Love.

10. In 2009, Google created the first same-day Doodle when water was discovered on the moon

Artist Jennifer Hom worked for just a few hours and then it went live.

Sometimes the team has the luxury of taking weeks or even a year to produce a Doodle. For the really quick turnaround ones, though, a small dedicated team of Doodlers keeps an eye out for events that might be a fit.

11. The team often turns to cultural consultants for feedback

This includes hiring guest artists, but also working with people beyond that to get the work right and truly represent a group accurately.

The Doodle team runs things by the consultant to make sure they felt it rang true.

The goal of Doodles is to make sure everyone, everywhere feels represented and valued.