--- title: Google Celebrates 20th Birthday in New Doodle description: Google celebrated its 20th birthday on Sept. 27 with a Doodle covering the most popular searches of the last two decades. canonical: https://time.com/5408176/google-20th-birthday-doodle/ author: Mahita Gajanan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-09-27T14:00:10.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-13T08:00:48.812Z og:title: Google Doodle Animates Popular Questions for 20th Birthday og:description: Today's Doodle was all about a milestone og:url: https://time.com/5408176/google-20th-birthday-doodle/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt76b0cc75fc111ca2/69893b39db2987fe3c260cb6/google-doodle-20th-birthday.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1429 og:image:height: 804 og:image:alt: google-doodle-20th-birthday og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Google Doodle Animates Popular Questions for 20th Birthday twitter:description: Today's Doodle was all about a milestone twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt76b0cc75fc111ca2/69893b39db2987fe3c260cb6/google-doodle-20th-birthday.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Google's 20th Birthday Doodle Brings the Most Popular Searches Ever to Life > Sponsored content. 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It covers the reporting, scoops and conversations shaping AI and the decisions facing leaders. #### Where can I get reported AI news rather than commentary? In the Loop is TIME's AI newsletter, built on original reporting and access to the people building and governing AI. It publishes Tuesdays and Fridays and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes TIME's In the Loop? Harry Booth, a tech reporter at TIME, writes In the Loop. #### Is In the Loop free? Yes. In the Loop is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-loop-2026q3/newsletters?i=fd5570d5-33a6-4402-9c53-08379996a620&cr=time-nl-loop-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_ by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Sep 27, 2018 2:00 PM UTC Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Sep 27, 2018 2:00 PM UTC [Google](http://time.com/5319643/octavia-butler-google-doodle/) celebrated its 20th birthday on Sept. 27 with a Doodle covering the most popular searches of the last two decades. Questions like “What will happen on Y2K?”, “How do you tie a tie?” and “What’s the most popular sport in the world?” made up some of Google’s most common queries in its early years. People also asked how to dance, whether Pluto is still a planet and how autotune works, among several questions. In more recent years, people have wondered how to pronounce “GIF” and asked “What’s a selfie?” according to the Doodle. Google has also included a feature under its main bar with a link to what people have [searched for over the last 20 years](https://20years.withgoogle.com/?i=lindsaylohan). According to its insights, Ed Sheeran was the third most searched musical artist of 2017 and 2018, and Lindsay Lohan was the third most searched actor of 2004 and 2007. “Twenty(ish) years ago, two Stanford Ph.D. students launched a new search engine with a bold mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Google said in its description of the Doodle. “Though much has changed in the intervening years — including now offering Search in more than 150 languages and over 190 countries — Google is still dedicated to building products for everyone.” ## Transcript [00:01] >>The Doodle [00:07] team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, [00:10] and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even [00:13] sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially [00:17] collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate [00:21] with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on [00:25] this project. [00:34] >>We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and [00:36] we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, [00:39] flowers and things like that. But Ira and his [00:44] team are awesome. [00:44] >>They were able to pull stories that they have collected [00:47] over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and [00:49] they're all about love in all different respects of the word. [00:55] They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really [00:58] fun and really sweet. [00:59] >>The stories run the [ unk ]. There is [01:03] a story about middle school love. [01:03] >>I was in the cafeteria, just got [01:07] on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. [01:11] >>There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that [01:14] she made a mistake. [01:14] >>My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I [01:14] could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and [01:20] I-- and I called the police because I thought [01:24] he got lost or something happened. [01:28] >>When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I [01:31] listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of [01:34] where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. [01:37] >>One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. [01:43] We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just [01:46] drew everyone as a dog. [01:47] >>Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. [01:47] >>And when you click on it, the heart will flip, [01:52] the audio will play and you will also see the images that [01:55] we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, [01:59] now we are all going to brainstorms together because we [02:02] need the creative side and we also need the technical side [02:04] to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this [02:08] one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, [02:12] because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I [02:15] first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only [02:17] did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more [02:21] animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we [02:24] needed a dedicated team. [02:24] >>Some of our most like ambitious to those have come [02:26] from engineers that are just incredibly talented [02:30] and spare similar time for our projects. [02:33] >>Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that [02:36] is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology [02:41] hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too [02:43] conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to [02:46] tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. [02:53] The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep [02:56] my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting [03:00] a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw [03:03] and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." [03:07] >>We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. [03:08] We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences [03:11] are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what [03:14] you're gonna get. 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