14 DAY TRIAL // You may have noticed that Google is running a Charles Dickens-themed doodle globally. It is the famed author's 200th birthday and Google is celebrating by running a special doodle on its homepage.
The doodle is quite dense, as opposed to Google's usual style, and features many of Dickens' famous characters, from Ebenezer Scrooge to Estella and Pip from Great Expectations.
"Today marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birthday (born February 7, 1812). To celebrate the life and work of one of the world's greatest storytellers, the Google doodle team created this fantastic celebratory doodle for our home page," Google Books' Ariel Levine wrote.
"In addition, our Google Books editorial team curated a collection of free and featured Dickens classics available in the Google eBookstore in Dickens' native land (United Kingdom) and some Commonwealth countries (Canada, Australia) as well as the US -- a relatively new nation that Dickens himself visited in 1842 and 1867," she added.
Dicken's novels and stories are now all in the public domain, so they are free to use and read by anyone in the world. Copyright laws were not yet so draconian in those days, though, if the MPAA and the RIAA have something to do with it, that might change.
If you use Google eBooks, you can check out the collection created for the author's 200th birthday and maybe finally read some of the classics you may have missed out on.
Mike Dutton, Google's artist that handled the doodle, wanted to create something that felt true to the style and tone of Dickens' works. It still has a playful look, characteristic of Google doodles, but the colors and the style of the characters are original.
The doodle features plenty of the well-known characters, around the Google letters of course, but also features London in the background, a major "character" in most of Dickens' work.
