Google Celebrates Veterans Day for the First Time

Yesterday was a glorious day for Google, the first time since its inception in 1999 when it designed a special logo to honor the soldiers that sacrificed their lives for their country.

The element that was set to individualize the logo for this special holiday was a World War One helmet, placed on both the "o"s and on the "e". This has come as a result of the waves of protests received by the California based company because of the numerous "foreign" holidays it had re-shaped its logo for, such as 50 years from the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik or Remembrance Day in Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Despite all that, Google refused to acknowledge any of the US special days, preferring to mark St Valentine's Day and miss Memorial Day this spring and for the past 8 years. The official position from the Great Search Engine was that it would do so because it's a holiday that is much too solemn: "Google's special logos tend to be lighthearted and often scientific in nature. We do not believe we can convey the appropriate somber tone through this medium to mark holidays like Memorial Day." However, the Canadian homepage hosted a tribute to fallen soldiers.

The 11th of November was set as the holiday because back in 1918 hostilities ceased on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed it to be Armistice Day and it was a day set aside to commemorate the soldiers that fought in WWI but later on, in 1954, president Eisenhower decided it will be a holiday to honor American veterans of all wars and changed its name to the one in use today.

Google turned out to be the only one to mark this day and, as such, Yahoo! or Ask.com failed to do so even though they constantly did it in the previous years.