14 DAY TRIAL // Google doodles aren't that special anymore, with a new one coming every week or so. But the company is trying to keep each one fresh, like the most recent doodle celebrating John Lennon's 70th birthday.
It seems like a rather innocuous, if stylish, doodle until you click on it. The doodle is actually an embedded YouTube video, a short one at that, set to one of Lennon's most popular songs "Imagine."
Lennon became famous with The Beatles, arguably one of the most popular bands of all time. Together with Paul McCartney, he wrote many of the hits that made The Beatles the household name it is.
His solo career also led to quite a number of classic hits, including Imagine which Google is now using for its short animated video. Lennon would have been 70 today. He was murdered on 8 December 1980.
The seemingly hand-drawn video morphs into various images, including a flower, a butterfly and other natural elements before ending with the Google logo and a simple sketch of Lennon himself.
To date, it is the first time Google has embedded a video on its homepage and the first video doodle. The video is available on YouTube, of course, and you can see it embedded below.
However, Google is not displaying any view stats for the video. It would have been interesting to know just how many people were visiting the Google homepage and playing the video.
Once the video ends, a search for "John Lennon" loads, demonstrating Google Instant. As is usually the case, some of the first results, from the Universal Search box, are about the doodle itself.
There have been animations before but they were done using standard HTML technologies.
Google has been diversifying the type of doodles it showcases this year. It had a working Pac Man game for the popular arcade game's birthday. Recently it run a particle simulation doodle before releasing Google Instant.
