14 DAY TRIAL // Google doodles keep things fresh, more than anything else. Visits to the Google homepage are more interesting if there's something new greeting you every few days or weeks. They're also great when trying to mark a special occasion or a special time of the year.
"Since 1998, when the first doodle was released, they have been one of the most loved features of the Google home page," Google's Claudio Cherubino wrote.
"There have been doodles to celebrate all kinds of events, including national holidays, birthdays of artists and scientists, sports competitions, scientific discoveries and even video games!," he said.
But that same idea works for companies using Google Apps as well. If you want to imitate Google's spirit to the bone or you just want to celebrate a special event at your company, there's a simple way of changing the custom logo that gets displayed in Google Apps to all users.
"Want your company logo to change for selected events or holidays, just like doodles?," he asked.
"The Admin Settings API allows domain administrators to write scripts to programmatically change the logo of their Google Apps domain, and Google App Engine offers the ability to configure regularly scheduled tasks, so that those scripts can run automatically every day," he explained.
Since the company or organization logo can be changed by admins via an API, the task can be automated or, at least, a custom script or tool can be built to simplify the process. If you only plan to change the logo once in a while, the API is all you need.
However, if you want to fully automate the process, perhaps if you have a series of doodles coming in over a few days, you can use the Google App Engine to run the tasks. Google has a complete example script for both the jobs in its blog post.