What Are Google Doodles? Know Who Designed and How Topics Are Chosen

A Google Doodle is a temporary artistic modification of the original logo that appears on the homepage. which was envisaged to honor special occasions through its Doodles, which clearly signifies Google's ability to reach out to people around the world and find a way to share joy with them. 

Doodles are basically designed to celebrate events of cultural significance, such as festivals, holidays, famous figures, or anniversaries.

Google Doodle: Celebrating Idli

On October 11, 2025, The Google has launched the Idli Doodle, celebrating Idli, which is featured as its impressive doodle on October 11, 2025. Google has created a special impressive doodle celebrating Idli on this special occasion.

Notably, every year, the Southern Food & Beverage Museum celebrates Southern Food Heritage Day on October 11!

Idli is undoubtedly a special part of the culturally rich and delicious cuisine of this southern state. It is a confluence and integration of diverse people from around the world, each contributing their own ingredients and expertise to create a unique dish.

To mark Google's 27th birthday, Google displayed its old Doodles as a symbol of remembering and paying respect to its past.

A Google Doodle is a temporary artistic modification of the original logo that appears on the homepage. Google always tries to honor special occasions through its Doodles, which clearly signifies Google's ability to reach out to people around the world and find a way to share joy with them. Doodles are designed to celebrate events of cultural significance, such as festivals, holidays, famous figures, or anniversaries.

The very first Doodle launched as an “out of office” message of sorts when company founders Larry and Sergey went on vacation.

According to Google, the first Doodle was launched as a kind of "out of office" message when founders Larry and Sergey went on vacation. 

The first Doodle was published in 1998 to let people know they were going on vacation. The first international Doodle was launched in 2000 to celebrate Bastille Day in France.

What's a Google Doodle?

Google Doodles are the spontaneous and delightful changes made to the Google logo. They celebrate a range of local and international topics ranging from holidays and anniversaries, to trailblazing individuals who have impacted culture. Doodles span a range of formats including static illustrations, animations, slideshows, videos, and interactive games. Over their 25 years of existence, Doodles have become a beloved part of Google Search.

AI

The Doodle team partnered with the Google Magenta and Google PAIR teams to create the first AI-powered Doodle celebrating Johann Sebastian Bach. Players are first prompted to compose a two measure melody of their choice. With the press of a button, the Doodle then uses machine learning to harmonize their custom melody into Bach’s signature music style.

How did the idea for Doodles originate?

In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were planning to take a few days away from the office to attend the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. However, they needed a simple and clear way to let Google users know they wouldn’t be around in case any inquiries came in while they were gone. 

They decided to take an untraditional approach to the "out of office" message by simply replacing the second “O” of the Google homepage logo with the Burning Man logo—and the first-ever Google Doodle was born! This first Doodle launched less than one week before Google was officially incorporated as a company. That’s why we say that Google Doodles are older than Google, Inc. itself!

How are Doodle topics chosen?

The Doodle team receives thousands of global ideas every year from both internal Googlers and the public. Guided by a set of Doodle principles, a committee of Googlers gather annually over the course of several months to determine which topics we will doodle for in the next calendar year. Through careful research, discussion with cultural consultants, local experts and more, the committee crafts an annual list of hundreds of Doodles that celebrate a range of interesting topics from around the world.

(Source: All image/content credit: Google)