Follow the Bouncing Balls… Google’s Mysterious Home Page Logo Uses Wacky Bouncing Balls (video) « Frugal Café Blog Zone

Follow the Bouncing Balls… Google’s Mysterious Home Page Logo Uses Wacky Bouncing Balls (video)

Posted By on September 7, 2010

One of Google’s more baffling logo doodles… interactive bouncing balls that move much like the swelling and contraction of waves in response to the user’s cursor being moved about (a video capture of the colorful balls in action is embedded below). Too cool!

It was a scant three days ago that Google featured another interactive logo, honoring science, on its homepage… Fullerene on Google Homepage Commemorates 25th Anniversary of Discovery of the Buckyball (video).

But why bouncing balls (or perhaps “gliding and swirling balls” would be more accurate), and why today? Mighty baffling, but there are a number theories.

From EW.com, PopWatch, Google’s bouncy ball homepage: Ah, mysteries!:

Wondering what’s up with today’s Google homepage? Well, join the club. The nerd club! We take turns bringing bagels and asking questions.

So far, Google’s been mum on why their homepage is featuring, er, mouse-avoiding balls,* saying only that it’s “fast, fun and interactive, just the way we think search should be.” Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with Google’s big media event tomorrow, where the company’s going to unveil their “latest technological innovation.” I hope it’s called Google Balls. I don’t care what it does, just please lord, let it be called Google Balls.

Other theories are that it’s a celebration of JavaScript, even though Google spokesfolk said it had nothing to do with a birthday.

YouTube contributor LouMajorsPhilospher has this theory about Google’s logo:

Google logo and Google colored moving balls for September 7, 2010 is celebrating Lou Majors theory of existence, The Eternal Cycle, first published on September 7th 1999.

From CBS News, Tech Talk, What the Heck Is Up With Those Google Balls?:

Google’s homepage illustrations marking notable holidays and anniversaries (like Magritte’s birthday or the launch of the Hubble telescope) are playful divertissements that usually link to a page explaining those not readily evident.

But on Tuesday visitors to the Internet search engine were confronted with a bizarre animation of morphing, colliding balls that swept across the page wherever the cursor passed over them.

While Google usually allows users to click on the illustrations to take them to information about the subject matter (in case you didn’t know who Sabiha Gokcen is), the nature of today’s illustration makes that impossible — whenever a cursor passes over the illustration, it morphs and moves away, thanks to Javascript and HTML 5 programming.

Google is therefore inviting a lot of web traffic from people merely trying to find out what the illustration means — if it in fact means anything.

Five of the top seven Google search terms this morning were “google logo,” “google balls,” “google logo hidden message,” “google homepage today,” and “google dots.”

Video capture of today’s bouncing balls on Google…

 

From Christian Science Monitor, Google logo: Is there a secret message hidden in the bouncing balls?:

Changes to the traditional Google homepage logo are often an attempt to honor artists and important historical figures – or to draw attention to an event such as the Olympics. But today’s Google logo – a mass of bright, bouncy colored balls – isn’t obviously linked to a birthday or anniversary, and Google has remained mum on the inspiration for the change.

So what gives? Conspiracy theories abound.

For his part, Ryan Tate of Gawker says Google is using the homepage logo as a way to drum up excitement in advance of a major announcement. “Some people predict Google is about to roll out search results that stream in as you type, a feature that’s already been tested on some users,” Tate writes. “Which would mean the death of that ‘I’m feeling lucky button’ that costs Google $110 million+ per year.”

Over at the Guardian, tech reporters Charles Arthur and Adam Gabbatt say the aim of the logo, which uses a kind of Web coding called CSS3, is effectively an attempt to lobby for changes in the infrastructure of the Web itself.

The logo was created to “draw attention to the importance of CSS3, an emerging standard which is being developed as the next version of the web language HTML, called HTML5, is being ratified by the World Wide Web Consortium,” Arthur and Gabbatt write. “Google has been eager to push HTML5 and CSS3, and its Chrome browser, because it offers many more possibilities in the design of web pages, which could be more interactive with less effort by designers.”

But David S. Morgan of CBS has an even simpler explanation: Today’s Google logo is just a celebration of the first Google birthday doodle itself, which went live on Sept. 7 of 2003. (The 2003 logo featured a cake and a party hat.)

“Although the domain name google.com was registered on Sept. 15, 1997, and the company incorporated on Sept. 4, 1998, Google previously celebrated its birthday with Google art on Sept. 7, in 2003 (5 years) and 2004 (6 years),” Morgan writes.

 

Assortment of previous Google home page doodle logos:

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I'm a conservative frugalist. My priorities: Watchdogging the government, making sure our tax dollars are spent wisely, living within our budgets (at home and in Washington, DC), and adhering to our Constitution and the conservative principles upon which it was developed by our founding fathers. Also, loving God, my family, and my country. Be wise, be frugal. God bless America!      

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