Sep 27, 2010 15:40 GMT  ·  By

Google is celebrating its 12th birthday today, as you might have noticed if you visited the homepage. As has become the tradition, Google is sporting a custom logo to mark the occasion, this time a drawing by American artist Wayne Thiebaud of, what else, a birthday cake.

Google starting featuring custom logos for its birthday back in 2002. Though the official date has shifted between September 7 and September 27, the latter now seems the final, official birthday.

The first birthday doodle was showcased in 2002, on September 27. It was a rather simple doodle, featuring the familiar Google logo and with a birthday cake and candles along with the figure "4" replacing the "l" in Google.

The second birthday doodle, however, was featured on September 7, 2003, marking Google's 5th birthday. It was very similar to the previous one, with the logo and a birthday cake.

The third doodle was also featured on September 7 and the style was, once again similar, with the logo, some balloons and confetti. "6" stood in for the second "o" in Google.

In 2005, Google returned to the September 27 date, though the move may have had an ulterior motive. Around that time Yahoo had announced an index which was larger than Google's, something that had not happened for quite some time. So Google used its birthday, well, one of its birthdays, to announce that it would no longer be showing the number of pages it indexed.

The same date was used in 2006 and for every birthday ever since, including this year. The style of the doodles remained the same right up to its 10th birthday.

For that special occasion, Google used the very first Google logo, which had a different font, but was similar to the one made famous by the company. For its 11th birthday, it went for a simple but to the point doodle featuring a double "l" to form 11.

Finally, for its 12th birthday, Google did something special and commissioned a work by American artist Wayne Thiebaud who is famous for drawing, among others, birthday cakes.


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