--- title: The Story Behind the First Google Doodle and the Evolution description: Google Doodles honor global events and people. Here's the story behind the search engine's animations. canonical: https://time.com/5679093/first-google-doodle/ author: Rachel E. Greenspan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-09-26T10:02:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T08:28:55.529Z og:title: The Story Behind the First Google Doodle og:description: Here's how it happened in 1998 and how it has evolved og:url: https://time.com/5679093/first-google-doodle/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78c425824986030e/698a0318929fad12a4bf4edd/burning_man_high-res.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2153 og:image:height: 1211 og:image:alt: The Story Behind the First Ever Google Doodle og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Story Behind the First Google Doodle twitter:description: Here's how it happened in 1998 and how it has evolved twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt78c425824986030e/698a0318929fad12a4bf4edd/burning_man_high-res.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The First Google Doodle in 1998 Was a 'Bit of a Joke.' Here's the Story Behind the Design That Started it All > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME The Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition The Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The day's top headlines, curated by TIME editors. The Brief brings TIME's perspective to the day's most important stories, helping readers understand not just what is happening, but why it matters. It combines original reporting and analysis with the best of TIME, spanning politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. 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Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=ce4ebcce-0ffb-4dfa-ac8b-65920fe5fb5e&cr=time-nl-brief-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 [Rachel E. Greenspan](https://time.com/author/rachel-e-greenspan/) ## Rachel E. Greenspan Sep 26, 2019 10:02 AM UTC by [Rachel E. Greenspan](https://time.com/author/rachel-e-greenspan/) ## Rachel E. Greenspan Sep 26, 2019 10:02 AM UTC When [Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin](https://time.com/4097855/google-larry-page-fortune-global-forum/) were headed to Nevada’s [Burning Man festival](https://time.com/5663633/burning-man-festival-space/) in August of 1998, they wanted users and employees to know they wouldn’t be at the search engine’s helm for a while. The Ph.D. students at Stanford University decided to replace the second ‘O’ in [Google’s homepage](https://time.com/5659017/google-calendar-tips-tricks/) logo with a stick figure resembling the [festival’s logo](https://burningman.org/). “It was a little bit of a joke,” Jessica Yu, the Google Doodle team lead, tells TIME. “It has definitely evolved a lot since then.” What began as a joke became Google Doodles that celebrate and honor holidays, people and issues worldwide, now an important venture for the [tech giant](https://time.com/5682034/google-doodle-rugby-world-cup/).  The first Doodle, circa 1998. Google Back when Brin and Page posted the Burning Man design, it was less than a week before Google was incorporated as a company on September 4, 1998\. It was two years until they used a prototype-Doodle again. But this time, rather than an out-of-office message, the design [celebrated France’s Bastille Day](https://www.google.com/doodles/bastille-day-2000) on July 14, 2000\. Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, was tasked with creating the design. Hwang became the chief designer for Doodles, creating about 50 per year, according to an [interview with Stanford’s alumni magazine](https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-art-of-the-doodle). Hwang has since moved onto equally impressive projects as a [vice president of visual and interactive design at Niantic](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/1/13483768/dennis-hwang-pokemon-go-designer-google-doodle), where he designed [Pokémon Go](https://time.com/4846753/pokemon-go-anniversary/).  Google celebrated the Rugby World Cup 2019 Opening Day with a doodle on Sept. 20, 2019. Google “In the early years, it was a controversial thing to do,” Hwang [told TIME in a previous interview,](http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1975305%5F2094231,00.html) of altering the company’s logo. “If you read any kind of corporate marketing or branding textbook, the one thing they tell you is to make your corporate branding consistent no matter what. But Larry and Sergey said, ‘Why not? We should have fun with this.'” Hwang continued creating Doodles for popular holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas — leading to one of the program’s best-known animations, the [Santa Tracker](https://time.com/5477091/santa-tracker-2018/). The Santa Tracker game allows users worldwide to keep tabs on “Santa” as he delivers gifts on Christmas Eve, inspired by the North American Aerospace Defense Command ([NORAD)’s version,](https://www.noradsanta.org/) which [began in the 1950s](http://mentalfloss.com/article/32021/why-did-norad-start-tracking-santa). In 2005, Hwang designed icons for the tracker to use alongside the Google Earth-led project. More than one million people tracked Santa with Google that year, [according to the company](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/tracking-santa-backstory.html), so the annual tradition continues.  2018's Santa Tracker Courtesy of Google Google does not publicly reveal view counts for all Doodles, so it’s hard to track just how popular the animations are. But the Google Doodle team is now comprised of a few dozen artists, managers, engineers and other employees who work towards a diverse range of designs, Yu says. The team certainly has extended its animations beyond just Christmas. A Doodle in March honored [Japanese inventor Seiichi Miyake](https://time.com/5553290/seiichi-miyake-google-doodle/), who created _Tenji,_ or tactile, blocks to help visually impaired people navigate public areas. “With every Doodle we want to surprise and delight our users,” Yu says, “so it’s important that we celebrate a wide range of people and topics.”  Google honors Seiichi Miyake with colorful Google Doodle Google Doodle techniques have also continued to evolve over the years. A [September 2018 Doodle honoring Fred Rogers](https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-mister-rogers) used stop motion animation, while [last year’s Halloween Doodle](https://www.google.com/doodles/halloween-2018) was a multiplayer video game that allowed users to play with others. This year’s [July 4 Google Doodle](https://time.com/5619724/google-doodle-baseball-game-july-4/) featured an animated backyard baseball game. Novice designers are welcome to participate, too. In 2008, the company formalized that process in one way, beginning a competition for kindergarten to twelfth grade students in the U.S. The winner of the annual Doodle for Google contest gets their Doodle displayed on Google’s homepage, as well as scholarship money and “tech packages,” [according to Google](https://doodles.google.com/d4g/faq/). The company holds separate competitions for countries throughout the world.  Jimmy Fallon and Doodle for Google National Winner Arantza Peña Popo during the Google Doodle reveal on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' on August 12, 2019. Andrew Lipovsky—NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images This year’s theme was “When I grow up, I hope…” and 222,000 students applied, Yu said in [Google’s winner announcement post](https://www.blog.google/inside-google/doodles/doodle-for-google-2019-winner/). [Arantza Peña Popo won](https://www.blog.google/inside-google/doodles/doodle-for-google-2019-winner/) for her Doodle, “Once you get it, you give back,” a piece of art showing generations of the women in her family. [Jimmy Fallon](https://time.com/5675674/kim-kardashian-on-jimmy-fallon/), who was one of the year’s contest judges, had her on _The Tonight Show_ to celebrate her win. “When I grow up, I hope to care for my mom as much as she cared for me my entire life,” the winner told Fallon on his show in August. “My mom has done so much for me and sacrificed a lot.” The Doodle team also promoted that message of empowerment on March 8 for [International Women’s Day](https://time.com/5547827/google-doodle-international-womens-day-2019/). With an interactive slideshow designed by women from around the world, 13 women leaders from different countries shared their perspectives on feminism and the future. “While each quote told a unique story,” Yu says, “they touched on universal themes, reminding us of how much we often have in common, even if we speak a different language or have very different backgrounds.” In addition to having new, different voices on the website through Doodle for Google, Yu says the team also encourages diversity of voices by having local managers based internationally. Someone in this on-the-ground position acts as a “cultural consultant,” and is typically from the country they’re representing.  Google Whether a Doodle is deployed in twenty countries’ Google homepages or just a few, some of the most touching ones honor those who have passed. A Feb. 7, 2015 Doodle was created in honor of [Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 148th birthday](https://www.google.com/doodles/laura-ingalls-wilders-148th-birthday). For [Maya Angelou](https://time.com/5572221/beyonce-homecoming-documentary-history/)‘s [90th birthday on April 4, 2018](https://www.google.com/doodles/dr-maya-angelous-90th-birthday), an animated video featured the poet’s writing. Some lines were read by Angelou’s own voice while others were voiced by artists inspired by the late author, including [Alicia Keys](https://time.com/5552343/alicia-keys-son-taylor-swift/), [Laverne Cox](https://time.com/5524043/laverne-cox-2019-nyfw/) and [Oprah Winfrey](https://time.com/5574283/oprah-avocados/). “Often, Doodles give people the opportunity to connect, online or off, over memories of someone or something that has been meaningful in their lives,” Yu says. “Occasionally the Doodle itself will even facilitate connection.” ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. And, you know, we keep making more and more of these things. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5679093/first-google-doodle/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5679093/first-google-doodle/"},"headline":"The First Google Doodle in 1998 Was a 'Bit of a Joke.' 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