The story behind Doodles

Google Doodles are the spontaneous and delightful changes made to the Google logo. They celebrate a range of local and international topics ranging from holidays and anniversaries, to trailblazing individuals who have impacted culture. Doodles span a range of formats including static illustrations, animations, slideshows, videos, and interactive games. Over their 25 years of existence, Doodles have become a beloved part of Google Search.

In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were planning to take a few days away from the office to attend the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. However, they needed a simple and clear way to let Google users know they wouldn’t be around in case any inquiries came in while they were gone. They decided to take an untraditional approach to the "out of office" message by simply replacing the second “O” of the Google homepage logo with the Burning Man logo—and the first-ever Google Doodle was born! This first Doodle launched less than one week before Google was officially incorporated as a company. That’s why we say that Google Doodles are older than Google, Inc. itself!

The team has created over 5,000 Doodles over the decades!

The team behind Doodles consists of in-house artists (called "Doodlers"), engineers, designers, program managers, marketers, and cultural consultants. We also partner with local guest artists and creators from around the globe to help bring Doodles to life.

The Doodle team receives thousands of global ideas every year from both internal Googlers and the public. Guided by a set of Doodle principles, a committee of Googlers gather annually over the course of several months to determine which topics we will doodle for in the next calendar year. Through careful research, discussion with cultural consultants, local experts and more, the committee crafts an annual list of hundreds of Doodles that celebrate a range of interesting topics from around the world.

The time it takes from sketch to launch for a Doodle varies widely: some have taken years and others just a few hours!

The Doodle team is always excited to hear ideas! If you have one, email doodleproposals@google.com with the details. Please note that the team receives hundreds of requests daily, so we unfortunately cannot respond to each submission— but rest assured that we're reading them!