For anyone who doesn’t use the internet or uses the Bing search engine [laughs] they will have missed out on Google’s latest ‘Google Doodle’ - pastel coloured balls that roll around when you try and click on them. Oddly addictive, apparently this makes users spend an extra 45 seconds more on the homepage.

Google Doodlers have been a core part of the Google team since 1998 when Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the sites founders, went to Burning Man (SO Google) and left a calling card for users in case the site went down in their absence. Probably the most famous of its recent Google doodles is the Pac-Man game that allowed visitors to the site an opportunity to play a full featured version of the seminal video game with the game maze spelling out using the Google logo. Brands will never tire of using Arcade games to promote themselves. 

For the celebration of Earth Hour, the white background was transformed to symbolise "the turning off of lights" and local disasters, such as the BP oil spill, are often acknowledged. So it's interesting to see a doodle for doodle's sake, with no meaning or cause attached to it.  The Telegraph newspaper investigates the meaning behind the new design, and, comes up with nothing.

 

Most people view the logo, on average, 89 times a day, yet no one really knows anything about it. Well, the current official Google logo was designed by Ruth Keda, and is wordmark based on the Catull typeface. The exclamation mark was added, mimicking the Yahoo! logo.

  Note, burning man doodle.
 

"There were a lot of different color iterations", says Ruth Kedar. "We ended up with the primary colors, but instead of having the pattern go in order, we put a secondary color on the L, which brought back the idea that Google doesn't follow the rules." Edgy.

  

Meet the team, "I really loved drawing ponies and unicorns. So I decided to do it for a job". Only at Google. But it's these crazies and their unswerving quest to make us love HTLM5 as much as they do, that brought us beautiful program innovations like this.

 

Although one angry blogger has voiced his distaste for having HTML5 "shoved down his throat" by changing his homepage to this...

Sad man.