How much fun is it to walk a piñata full of sweets while blindfolded? This children’s birthday party staple has been chosen by Internet giant Google to celebrate its 15th founding anniversary. Google users in countries where the calendar already marks September 27, 2013, Friday are probably whacking at a virtual star-shaped candy-filled piñata using the computer’s space bar for points at this very moment.
Birthday announcement
If it isn’t Friday in your time zone yet, then you will have someone to look forward to when you go to Google’s home page. Celebrate Google’s 15th birthday with a classic children’s party favorite. There’s something else to look forward to. For its 15th birthday, Google announced that its Hummingbird overhaul involves the use of a better search algorithm to make the search engine more responsive.
What’s your best score so far?
The playable piñata game comes in a very basic video game format. After clicking on the play button, a visual instruction is given on what bar to press and then it is game time. Online forums are already talking about highest possible points and other aspects of the anniversary doodle. If you haven’t tried it, make sure you spend a few minutes getting high scores.
Hurrah for Google doodles
The 15th anniversary Google doodle is just one of the many interesting and interactive doodles that the Internet giant has released in the past few years. They are fun modifications of the official Google logo that are usually rendered in Google’s signature primary colors. These appear to commemorate key persons worldwide and to celebrate notable events.
More recently the doodles are becoming more interactive and playable, as exemplified by the anniversary doodle. Imagine how many computer users are taking the time out to whack away at that colorful piñata at a given time before moving on to their online search.
Formerly BackRub
We do not know for sure what Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were thinking when they formed the company and called it BackRub years ago. BackRub doodle or BackRub search do not sound as good as Google doodle or Google search. The two Stanford University graduate students were working on a research project. Now that Google is the most used and most popular search page in the world, the two innovators must be very happy indeed of their achievements, not to mention the name change. Page and Brin are also multi-billionaires as well, which they probably did not foresee happening while they were tinkering with their computers holed up in a garage back then.
Date debate
It was 15 years ago when Google was established, and its founding happened during the month of September, but the actual date has been the subject of many debates. The website was incorporated on September 7 and some people opined that this should be the official birthday of Google. Actually, it was celebrated as Google’s birthday until the year 2005. Eventually it was clarified that the date of incorporation was September 4, 1998. Google.com, the domain name was believed to be registered on September 15 and for some, this should be considered the official birthday. Nevertheless, we celebrate the birthday of a company that changed forever how we use the Internet every 27th of September since 2006. It was the date when it announced the record number of indexed pages to settle an argument with Yahoo.
Many happy returns, Google!
Photo Credit: Interactive piñata Google doodle for its 15th birthday
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