Now-ubiquitous tech giant Google is celebrating its nineteenth birthday today (September 27th). The company name, which is a play on the term "googol" (the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes), has become synonymous with technological innovation and changed the very fabric of how we obtain information on the world wide web. To coincide with the big day, Google has made some fun games from its past available to web users for free.
As per The Verge, Google has conceived of this as a birthday surprise of sorts. The company's latest Doodle, the search engine homepage graphic that they are known for, is now a spinner mechanism that will transport players back in time (not literally though) to sample its most memorable Doodle games from previous years. Whether it's the musical puzzle game celebrating Beethoven’s 245th birthday or their Magic Cat Academy Halloween game from 2016, there's something for users of all ages and skill sets. What's more, there's a brand-new game in tow, a Snake game that you can play at any time just by searching “snake game.”
Alternatively, you can search “Google birthday surprise spinner” to give the wheel a spin and try your hand at the different retro Doodle games. Perhaps the most famous Doodle game of the bunch is the 2010 Pac Man browser game, which experts alleged at the time had cost the economy $120 million and 4.8 million hours of lost productivity. There's no telling if the gaming time that will no doubt be had at work by many Internet users around the world today will come close to that kind of money or productivity loss, but as far as Google's bottom line is concerned, let's just say no significant demage is likely to be done.
According to Recode, the first-ever Doodle was actually designed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin "as an out-of-office message in case of a server crash while the two founders attended the Burning Man Festival in 1998." Since then, the company has brown to employ more than 70,000 people and estimates show that they'll rake in around $50 billion this year in mobile ad revenue alone.