Happy birthday, Google -- haven't you grown? To celebrate, the search engine's home page is decorated today with a tasty Google doodle: a birthday cake painted by pop artist Wayne Thiebaud.
It's 12 years since PhD students Sergey Brin and Larry Page started the now legendary search engine. In that time the word Google, a play on 'googol', has become synonymous with searching the Web.
The mobile phone operating system Android has been adopted by a range of manufacturers to power phones such as the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S, and a wealth of tablet PCs.
It's also seen huge success with Google Maps and Gmail. Google Apps business software is gaining a foothold against Microsoft with folks such as the Guardian and this 'ere website ditching Outlook in favour of its email service.
It's not all been cake and pass the parcel, however. There's been some hyped failures such as Wave and the Nexus One phone, while Google Street View remains controversial.
We're not sure exactly which landmark Google is actually celebrating today: the google.com domain was actually registered on 15 September 1997. Still, it's Google's party and it can doodle if it wants to.
The doodle appears courtesy of the Visual Artists and Galleries Association of New York, in case you were wondering. Right, kill the light, it's time for cake. If you were Google, what you would wish for as you blow out your candles?
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Comments 3
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Anonymous 27 September, 2010 13:50
A successful social network which reaches 1 billion users before Facebook does, would be top of my birthday wish list if I was google.
Anonymous 27 September, 2010 13:57
Is that IE6 in that screenshot...tut tut tut
anonymous 27 September, 2010 15:06
Nope, it's Chrome