Top Ten Google Doodles of 2009

Google long known for spicing up its home page with 'doodle' tributes for various events and famous people's birthdays has continually used humor to soften its often maligned brand persona of being a monopoly... or should I say a Googlopoly!  In the spirit of a New Year approaching, I thought it befitting to look back at Google's TOP TEN 2009 artwork and congratulate the Grand-daddy of search engines for some doodles well done.

Here are my picks for Google's best logotype tweaks in honor of holidays, special events, and celebrations. (note: Please vote in our "Top Ten Googles Doodles of 2009 POLL" at the end of this blog).

1- Popeye

Popeye is one of the most recent doodles to be added to Google's homepage. It appeared on December 8 and marks the 115th anniversary of the birth of its creator, E.C. Segar.

2- Wallace and Gromit

November 04, 2009 was the 20th anniversary of Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit and GoogleUK honored them in all their clay glory, partaking of a cup of tea, like the true Englishmen that they are.

3- Sesame Street

On that same day (November 4) on this side of the pond, Google in the States paid homage to Big Bird and Sesame Street on the recent 40th year birthday of Sesame Street.


Google appeared to be especially fond of Sesame Street as they extended their tribute to them for an entire week. Here you have Bert and Ernie gracing the Google's homepage, two days later.

4- Barcodes

Not your typical doodle, but creative none the less. On October 7, 2009, Google replaced its logo with the bar code designed to commemorate the 57th anniversary of the first bar code patent. The Google logo bar code spells out “Google” using Code 128, which they describe as “a standard way of encoding ASCII character strings (ie. A-Z, a-z, 0-9, etc.) into a bar code.”

5- Matatma Gandhi

The face of the Indian independence movement leader replaces the letter "G" on Google's home page. He joins an elite group of icons including Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci who have also appeared as a 'Google Doodle'.