Google’s Daily Logo
Today is Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday. Who is he, you may ask? He wrote stories and fairy tales 200 years ago. A few of these stories are: The Little Mermaid, The Little Matchbox Girl, The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Princes and the Pea. Besides writing stories starting with the word the, he also wrote Thumbelina. (Maybe he had a thing for the letter T.)
So how do I know it’s Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday? Google told me so. I think Google’s Daily Logo sets what was once an obscure reference, and makes it the top five most searched term of the day. Take for example, Topeka, Kansas. Topeka, Kansas changed their name for a few days to Google, Kansas as a publicity stunt. It worked. Then Google took notice and changed their name to Topeka on their home page for the day.
I wonder whose job it is to change Google’s Daily Logo from day to day? They probably have some title like “Creative Director of Google’s Daily Logo.” Actually, Google would probably come up with a much cooler name than that. The guy would probably have some crazy Google acronym like G.O.O.G.L.E.—Gee, Optimizing and, Organizing, Gets, Lots of Earnings.
Google’s motto is, “Do no evil,” which is why they felt as a company they had to pull out of China because of censorship issues. That move cost them billions of dollars and sent stock prices tumbling.
Google is so big it’s become a verb—“Just Google it.”
But the coolest thing Google ever did for me was indexing this site. Believe it or not, it’s not as easy as you think. And after two or three months of writing consistently, I felt a small sense of accomplishment when you, the searcher, could type my full name in, without the .com and without having to type it in directly to the browser and have the site pop-up as #1 on the first page.
So here’s to you Google and Hans Christian Andersen, if I get 1% as big as either one of you, maybe some year on August 27, my name, Douglas Thomas Wallace, will be a Google logo of the day.