Google Doodle Spinner Surprise Marks 19th Birthday: Cricket, PacMan, Games

Wednesday marks the 19th birthday for Google and what better way to celebrate it than with a Google Doodle on the homepage of the site.

The image to celebrate the search giant's 19th birthday spelled out the word “Google” with gold animated inflatable balloons, with the letter “O” substituted out for a birthday cake and a spinner similar to what you’d see on a game show. When you click the spinner, you’re taken to another page and the surprise spinner revolves until it lands on one of 19 surprises that Google incorporated into the doodle.

Once it picks a surprise you can either spin again or click to open the surprise.

The surprises are all games that have been part of the Google Doodles before. PacMan, Tic-tac-toe, cricket and other popular doodle games from the past are all included on the spinner. In addition to games, other doodles like a breathing exercise and several music making doodles that were made for the site are also included on the spinner.

You could end up occupied all day if you keep spinning until you get to try them all out. There are 19 surprises in the spinner because it’s Google’s 19th birthday. And the choice to make them all surprises was made because Google’s history is “chock-full” of them, according to the Doodle’s description.

Google was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who were classmates at Stanford University in 1997. Brin was assigned the task of showing Page around campus, which is how the two met, completely by chance or, a surprise. From then on the two worked together to create the Google that billions of people use today. The Doodle commemorating the 19th birthday of the site is appearing in most countries around the world Wednesday.

The Doodle became a part of the site in 1998 when Page and Brin thought it would be fun to change up the logo to be about the Burning Man festival they would be attending. They made the change as a funny way to tell people they were out of the office. Then in 2000 they changed it again in honor of Bastille Day and because users of the site liked it so much they decided to continue with the designs. They started with popular holidays and soon moved on to also include events and anniversaries.

Now there’s a team of Doodlers and engineers who work together to decide which days of the year there should be a doodle, what they’ll honor and what the doodles will include. There have been more than 2000 doodles since the first one was created. The team that creates them all takes suggestions from the public and hosts a competition for school students in the United States each year for best doodle called the Doodle 4 Google contest.