doodle

I fear that Google might be afraid of being treated like the butcher of Weymouth.

You might not have heard the meat of this, but Dennis Spurr tried to put sausages up in his butcher's shop in Weymouth, England. They were in the shape of the Olympic rings.

The Olympic thought police came and ordered his rings unhung.

I mention this because, in celebration of today's Olympics opening ceremony (no, of course it's not being transmitted live in the U.S., not even online), Google has created a doodle.

It is lovely little thing. But in order … Read more

Google's latest Doodle celebrates the birthday of one of history's most famous pilots.

Commemorating the 115th birthday of Amelia Earhart, today's Google Doodle portrays the pilot with her scarf fluttering in the wind as she stands next to a Lockheed Vega 5b, the same plane she flew when she completed her cross-Atlantic trip in 1932.

Earhart followed that voyage, in 1935, by becoming the first person to fly along across the Pacific. Of course, the aviatrix is better known today for her tragic disappearance in 1937 when she and navigator Fred Noonan attempted to fly around the … Read more

There will be those who will feel Google's latest doodle brings an entirely new meaning to "I'm feeling lucky."

For Google's embrace of more open sexual mores continues with a doodle celebrating the 150th birthday of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt.

Yes, not a week after the company encouraged the world to "Legalize Love" -- which is absolutely not, never, no a suggestion that governments should get with it on gay marriage -- here we have a beautiful tribute to a painter who found his own world a little too tight for comfort.

Klimt … Read more

I worry that Google's doodlers have been given a little time off, just at the time when something supremely animated was needed to lift America's dreariness on July 4.

Today, instead of some glorious and uplifting doodle, Google offers a very simple affair, the logo spelling out the words: "This Land Was Made For You And Me."

The only unusual accompaniment is that of an acoustic guitar, a homage to Woody Guthrie, whose "This Land Is My Land" includes the doodle's line.

Guthrie was very keen to offer of his guitar that "… Read more

Normally, when Google creates doodles, it uses its brains to create art that everyone can grasp and feel.

For tomorrow in the U.S. (and today in places like New Zealand), however, the company has decided to offer no such creative mercies.

June 23, 2012 would have been the 100th birthday of Alan Turing. And you can hardly celebrate his memory with something fluffy and brightly colored.

Instead, there are a series of 1s and 0s and arrows pointing to left and right.

Here's what I know: there is a green start button, which I am sure one is … Read more

Google is cuddling up to governments more than ever.

Like the wiliest of lovers, the company is doing this so that it can keep the vast, elected egos in their place.

However, who could have imagined that part of this affection would consist of allowing world leaders to draw their own doodles?

I bow to The Jerusalem Post which revealed that Google Chairman Eric Schmidt met with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel yesterday.

During this meeting, Netanyahu presented Schmidt with a doodle, allegedly the first ever by a world leader.

Yes, this was an homage to the Google … Read more

We have much for which to thank Richard Nixon.

If it wasn't for him, the phenomenon that is the Google Father's Day doodle might never have occurred.

For it was one of America's more dramatic presidents who signed Father's Day into law in 1972. So now we can look forward to Google celebrating it the way it forgot to celebrate Flag Day earlier this week.

Generally, Google has looked upon fathers in a traditional manner. Last year, it offered Dad a necktie.

This year, we see Dad in need of a mug of coffee (it might … Read more

Mother's Day doesn't fall on the same day everywhere.

Somehow, the card companies that invented it couldn't quite manage worldwide co-ordination. So while the U.S. and Australia seem to celebrate their mothers today, the British and the Saudi Arabians, for example, honored their mothers on March 18. (They had their own doodle, embedded below.)

Still, Google is a quintessentially profit-oriented American company, so today its doodle shows how mothers can profit from the affections of their little offspring.

Yes, it's 'o" for offspring, as two little o's in Google's logo come racing … Read more

One would like to be a fly in the distilled water at one of Google's doodle team meetings.

One can only imagine the fierce debates, the intellectual swordplay and -- surely -- the research that goes into deciding who deserves a doodle.

I am grateful to the Washington Post for waking me early today to tell me that the winning recipient of Google's grace for May 9 is Howard Carter.

In 1922, Carter decided to go to Egypt, in the company of the Earl of Carnarvon in search of Tutankhamun's tomb. Having found it, he spent another … Read more