Interactive and Video Doodles
On May 21, 2010, the 30th anniversary of the arcade game Pac-Man, Google unveiled worldwide their first interactive logo, created in association with Namco. Anyone who visited Google could play Pac-Man on the logo, which featured the letters of the word 'Google' on the Pac-Man maze. The logo also mimicked the sounds the original arcade game made. The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button was replaced with an "Insert Coin" button. Pressing this once enabled you to play the Pac-Man logo. Pressing it once more added a second player, Ms. Pac-Man, enabling 2 players to play at once, controlled using the W,A,S,D keys, instead of the arrows as used by Player 1. Pressing it for a third time performed an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search. It was then removed on May 23, 2010, initially replacing Pac-Man with the normal logo. Later on that day, Google released a permanent Google Pac-Man site, due to the popular user demand for the playable logo.
On September 4, 2010, Google replaced the logo with an interactive Buckminsterfullerene or "buckyball" doodle to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its discovery.
On September 6, 2010, Google added another interactive logo, which consisted of numerous coloured balls that fly near a cursor. On February 8, 2011, Google ran one of its most interactive Doodles in honor of Sci-Fi writer Jules Verne's 183rd birthday. "Pulling" on a lever enabled viewers to get a Nautilus submarine's view undersea of everything from divers to treasure to sea creatures, including a coral formation in the shape of the logo.
On October 8, 2010, Google ran its first animated doodle, a short music video of "Imagine" to commemorate John Lennon's 70th birthday. Similarly, Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday was celebrated on September 5, 2011 with an animated clip set to "Don't Stop Me Now". On April 15, 2011, Google sported the first video doodle, commemorating Charlie Chaplin's 122nd birthday. This doodle was a black and white YouTube video that, when clicked upon, started playing before redirecting to the usual Google search featuring the doodle's special occasion. All parts in this short film were played by the Google doodle team, and special behind-the-scenes footage was to be found on the Google blog.
Google displayed an interactive electric guitar doodle starting June 9, 2011 to celebrate the 96th birthday of Les Paul.
Apart from being able to hover the cursor over the doodle to strum the strings just like one of Les Paul's Gibson guitars, there was also a leopard button, which when enabled allowed interaction with the doodle via the leopard. The doodle still maintained some resemblance to the Google logo. In the U.S, the doodle also allowed the user to record a 30 second clip, after which a URL is created and able to be sent to others. The doodle remained on the site an extra day due to popularity in the US. It now has its own page linked to the Google Doodles archives.
On June 15, 2011, Google displayed images updated almost in real time of an ongoing total lunar eclipse, along with a scroll bar allowing visitors to view images from the entire duration of the event. Images were captured from cameras in places where the eclipse was visible including South Africa, Dubai and the Canary Islands.
On November 23, 2011, Google celebrated the 60th anniversary of Stanislaw Lem's first book, The Astronauts, by creating an interactive logo using concepts and illustrations from The Cyberiad. August 6th and October 12th of the same year also included interactive doodles - the former date, Lucille Ball's 100th birthday, made the Google logo a television set playing clips of I Love Lucy. The latter date, Art Clokey's 90th birthday, made the Google logo into interactive versions of Gumby characters.
On May 23, 2012, Google's logo changed into a playable synthesizer in honor of Robert Moog's 78th birthday. On June 23nd, in commemoration of Alan Turing's 100th birthday, Google's logo became an interactive Turing Machine.
On August 7, 2012, Google's logo changed into a playable hurdles as part of the celebration of 2012 London Olympics. This was followed with an interactive Google Doodle of a basketball game, canoe and soccer.
On September 8, 2012, Google's logo changed into a playable Star Trek scene as celebration of the 46th anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series.
Read more about this topic: Google Logo
Famous quotes containing the word video:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)