Tech giant Google is celebrating its 17th birthday with a retro-style Doodle harking back to the days when founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page would work from their dorm rooms at Stanford University. Many were seen wishing Google a ‘Happy 18th’ earlier this month too. If there’s some confusion about when the company’s birth anniversary actually is, there’s no official date.
It celebrated first on September 27 with a Google Doodle marking its 4th year in 2002. Since then, it has colored its homepage with special sketches for its 5th, 6th and 7th birth anniversaries on September 8, September 7 and September 26 in 2003, 2004 and 2005, in that order. But the company has been sticking with today’s date since its 15th birthday in 2013.
Incidentally, the first ever Google Doodle was put up even before the company was incorporated. On August 31 in 1998, Brin and Page placed a stick figure drawing behind the second O in the logo as a fun way to indicate that they were on holiday at the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert. The tradition was officially kicked off when the two founders asked intern Dennis Hwang (presently working as webmaster) to create something for Bastille Day in 2000.
Thousands of Google Doodles have been designed by a team of illustrators and engineers since then. These drawings generally celebrate holidays, anniversaries, scientists, artists, and other special events and people. Today’s picture depicts a figurine of a Linux penguin, a server partially made from toy building blocks, a lava lamp, balloons and a party hat. In the starring role is one of those old computer monitors displaying the first beta Google homepage.
While talking about the Google Doodle for its 17th birthday, the company says it could not have made it so far without a wee bit of luck. Of course, no one’s saying loads of hard work and genius weren’t involved too.