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ENTITY shares google logo historyPhoto via Instagram / @lifeatgoogle

At some point, you’ve probably had a question that no one in your friend group could answer. And then you hear the phrase, “Just Google it.”

For many of us millennials, Google has been a savior to quenching our burning questions. But you probably don’t know much about where Google started because, you know, it’s always been there.

So just this once, we’ll save you the trouble of “just Googling it” to tell you about the Google logo history and where the popular search engine got its start. ENTITY is here to provide five facts you need to know about the Google logo history and how it became as iconic as it is today.

1 The Google logo history: It all started in a dorm room.

ENTITY shares google logo history

Photo via Instagram / @larrypageofficial

You probably don’t want to see or smell a lot of what comes out of a man’s college dorm room. But for Larry Page, Ph.D, college wasn’t just about crushing beer cans and forgetting to do laundry.

Google was born in Page’s Stanford dorm room on Sept. 4, 1998. With help from Sergey Brin, the two Ph.D students created the search engine that now processes 40,000 searches a second and 3.5 billion searches per day. Their original 1998 mission statement was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

The very first Google logo used the iconic red, blue, green and yellow color scheme that the modern-day logo uses today. However, the order of the colors was slightly different from today’s design.

And as the Google logo’s history shows, Page took a note from Yahoo’s design when he switched the colored letters in Oct. 1998 to what they are today. How? He added an exclamation point.

2 How the Google logo changed: It went from static to animated.

ENTITY shares Google logo history

Changing colors and adding (then removing) an exclamation point was just the first of many changes the Google logo underwent through the years. But it didn’t change much. Once the team ditched the exclamation point, the Google logo didn’t change for almost 11 years. And even the designs that came after modeled the logo with the same basic characteristics.

In 2010, however, designers started playing with the typeface, shadows, letter spacing and font until they got to the current logo, which was launched Sept. 1, 2015.

That logo took on a whole new style, leaving the basic outline in the past. Instead of a static design, the new and improved logo incorporates colored dots and a color-wheel G to visualize the processing power of the search engine.

3 The first Google doodle: The creators left a message before attending Burning Man.

ENTITY shares google logo history

Nowadays, many people look forward to the different doodles Google creates to celebrate holidays.

However, the first Google doodle was actually created to be an away message. Like any college student of today, when festival season comes around, it’s time to head to the desert for some great music. And that’s exactly what Page and Brin did in 1998.

Before heading to the Nevada desert, the two creators wanted their users to know they would be out of the office. What better way to do so than incorporating a Burning Man Google doodle into their logo’s design? The second “O” was transformed into a little stick-figure man in honor of the festival. And it also warned users that if the site crashed, it was because its operators were absent.

It seems fitting, then, that in 2001, when Page and Brin were looking for a new Google CEO, they returned to Burning Man to find their answer.

Eric Schmidt passed their management test of dealing with the volatile, wild nature of Burning Man, which they equated to the craziness of the Google workplace. He got the job. And it’s a good thing he did because he ended up taking Google’s revenues from the millions range to the billions range in the 10 years he worked as CEO.

4 Google doodle contest: Users can now become designers.

ENTITY shares google logo history

But the Google logo history isn’t all about its original creators. Google now incorporates its users by asking them to come up with temporary doodles.

In 2000, Page and Brin took their original Burning Man logo idea and expanded it. They asked intern Dennis Hwang to design a doodle for Bastille Day. The doodle was so well-received that they made Hwang Google’s Chief Doodler. But as users searched for more entertainment while using the search engine, the demand for new doodles increased. Today, Google employs a team of talented illustrators to create the doodles.

However, Google also understands that their employees aren’t the only talented doodlers. Thus, they extended the invitation to their younger users in 2008 to create the perfect doodle.

The Google Doodle contest has given United States elementary, middle and high school students the opportunity to come up with their own doodle for the past nine years. Connecticut native, Sarah Harrison won the 2017 search for this year’s Google doodle. She entered the competition in the 10th-12th grade range and her design, “A Peaceful Future,” is pictured above.

In addition to her design appearing on the Google homepage, she won a $30K college scholarship and a $50K technology award for her school.

5 Google doodle today: The search engine logo will teach you something you didn’t know before.

ENTITY shares Google logo history

The Google logo history leaves us at where we are now, in 2017. In addition to Google doodles and changes to the design of the permanent logo, Google incorporates learning before you even search anything.

Temporary Google logos now feature interactive tools like “A Day in History,” which explains popular and notable events that occurred in history. The search engine also highlights historical figures on their birthdays and explain the meaning of lesser-known holidays.

And since the 1998 Burning Man doodle, Google doodlers have created around 2,000 doodles. And we have to say, some of today’s designs are truly artistic and moving. On International Women’s Day in 2014, the clickable temporary Google logo offered a video reel of inspiring women around the world sharing their experiences and celebrating the holiday.

ENTITY shares Google logo history

And now, hopefully you have a better understanding of the Google logo history. So pay some extra attention next time you hit the search engine to see what Google brings us next.

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