The first time Google created a doodle to celebrate its birthday was way back in 2002, to mark Google's 4th birthday. Google was founded on September 4, 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. At that point in time, the two were Ph.D. students at Stanford University who didn't know they were going to change the world forever.
Saturday's animated doodle features the letters of Google in their iconic blue, red, yellow and green colours, with the letter 'G' wearing a party hat. The 'G', along with the first 'O' and 'L' feature stick figure arms and legs, and are the stars of the show, with the other letters remaining static throughout.
The animated Google doodle sees the letter 'G' marking the height of the first 'O', which appears to be quite excited it has grown substantially since its last measurement. The letter 'L' however has a point to make, running up to get its height marked off on the wall. Being of equal height with the big 'G', it's no surprise the 'L' is much taller than the 'O' - which loses its excitement to see the marked difference in heights.
The doodle is visible to almost all regions across the world, as depicted by the company on its doodle archive page - which also shows the company having celebrated September 27 as its birthday with a doodle on 9 separate occasions - and in 2009, also as Germany's Election Day.
Google celebrated its 15th birthday last year with an interactive Google doodle that featured a pinata game. Google's 14th birthday was marked with a doodle that featured a cake with 14 candles. The cake transformed into a Google logo, as each candle was blown out.
The Mountain View giant started celebrating its birthday on September 27 after 2005, when it made an announcement about indexing a record number of pages. Google acknowledges that the exact date when it celebrates its birthday has moved around over the years.
The company details its history on its corporate page, listing all the important milestones in its 16 year career, from the day co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met in Stanford in 1995, to the day in September 2013 when Android passed the 1 billion device activation milestone. 2014 doesn't feature any milestones yet.
For more Google doodles, visit this page.
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