New Delhi: It's the second Sunday of May, and the Google doodle has a greeting card feel about it. It's Mother's Day and Google is wishing all the mothers with its characteristic doodle.
While Mother's Day is celebrated on different days in many parts of the world, it is the second Sunday of May (May 8 in 2011) is most widely celebrated. Anna Marie Jarvis, had started a campaign in 1907 following her mother's death to make Mother's Day a recognised holiday in the US. In 1912 she obtained trademarks for the phrases "second Sunday in May" and "Mother's Day" and established the Mother's Day International Association. US President President Woodrow Wilson signed a law making the holiday official. But Jarvis was disappointed with the commercialisation of the event.
The ancient Greek and Romans also held festivities in honour of their mother goddesses. In Britain and Celtic Europe, goddess Brigid and later St. Brigid were honoured with a Mother's Day in spring.
Google has been celebrating Mother's Day with its doodles for a number of years now and the Mother's Day doodle always has a flower in it.
For a dozen years, Google has been occasionally swapping its everyday logo for a doodle. The Google doodles, an artistic take on the Google logo, have gained immense popularity over the past few years and the Google doodle team has put out commemorative doodles on numerous events of international or national importance, ranging from news events, civic milestones, birthdays, death anniversaries and important dates in history. Google estimates it has created more than 900 doodles since 1998, with 270 of them running in 2010. Some appear globally, and others are tailored for local markets.
Recently the Google doodles have become more interactive in nature and Google seems to be fast doing away with static images for their doodles. The recent doodle celebrating 160 years of the first World's Fair, on May 1, had put together different elements of the fair that were viewable more closely with a magnifying glass effect that appeared when a user hovered the cursor over the logo.
Ticklish pandas, frolicking penguins, a growling lion, a cascading waterfall, waterfall climbing fish, a fish devouring bear, birds, butterflies, a koala and a jumping frog got together on April 22 for an animated and interactive Google logo that celebrated the 41st Earth Day.
For Charlie Chaplin's birthday Google home page featured a YouTube video starring members of Google Doodle team enacting a Google-themed Chaplinesque scene. German chemist Robert Bunsen was honoured with an animated image of a laboratory on his 200th birthday.
The Google doodle had first gone interactive in May 2010 to celebrate the 30th birthday of the popular Pac-Man game. Then on October 8, 2010, Google celebrated John Lennon's birthday, a day in advance, with an innovative doodle that played a 32 second clip of Imagine, considered to be the singer-songwriter's most popular song.
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