Google and Its Particle Movement Simulator Logo
By Talib Qizilbash | Technology | Published 14 years ago
Google has a way of keeping things fun and creative on its homepage. So besides the new apps and the new features on Gmail it rolls out regularly, its specially designed logos celebrating people, holidays and landmark events add a little levity to the workday.
But some logos are about more than fun.
The most recent logo, which can be seen on some localised Google websites today (September 7, yet, not all international versions are presenting it, e.g. Google Pakistan, Google Canada) and reportedly celebrates Google’s 12th birthday, represents and acts like a particle movement simulator. Move your cursor close to the familiarly coloured blue-red-yellow-green logo and the little balls that make up the interactive logo spread and fan out, depending on the speed and location of the cursor.
The dynamic logo has been blogged about on softpedia.com where it says the new Google doodle “showcases the type of animation and interactivity possible with standard web technologies.” As such, for techies, programmers and animators, this most recent logo is more than “cool”, it can be, or can at least trigger, an online workshop of sorts. The softpedia article says this:
There’s a debate around the web about how Google is doing it. It looks like Google opted for a rather simple hack and the balls are just divs styled with the CSS border radius attribute, to make them round. Google then uses JavaScript code to control their motion.
Some argue that Google could have used more modern tools, like SVG vector graphics or even the HTML5 canvas element. However, it’s likely that Google wanted everyone to be able to see the doodle and since current Internet Explorer versions have no support for HTML5 or SVG files for that matter. The doodle is said to be working in Internet Explorer 7, but all of the balls are the same size.
If you do not see the latest logo when you go to Google.com, try one of these links directly:
Or you can watch the video below (but that steals all the fun):