For many people across the country the first day of spring was marked not by warm temperatures and flowers popping up, but by today's Google Doodle.
Today's doodle consists of a ghost-like figure watering the ground which encourages flowers to pop up and clicking on it leads to a list of news stories celebrating the first day of spring. However, with a major snow storm having pounded the mid-Atlantic this week and cold temperatures locked in around much of the country the doodle was the only warm spot today for a lot of people.
Spring officially sprang at 9:57 a.m. EST, but for most of the country temperatures remained chilly with Grand Forks, N.D. expecting snow tonight and freezing temperatures the rest of the week. The northeast is in the 40s and sunny San Diego truly will have a spring-like day warming into the 60s.
Google's Doodles have a long and fun history. According to the company, the idea first came to fruition in 1998 when its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin played with the logo to indicate that they were attending Burning Man. The result was a funky stick man that they placed behind the logo. The two joked that it was there way of leaving an away message to their customers.
In 2000 Google took doodles to the next level when they had then intern, and now site webmaster, Dennis Hwang, create a doodle to celebrate Bastille Day. The idea took off with fans and doodles worked their way into the fabric of the site. Demand is now so high that an entire team of artists, called doodlers naturally, along with engineers are tasked with developing one of the site's signature pieces.
The fact that Google's homepage is normally austere makes the bits of artwork stand out even more.
So far 1,000 doodles have been created for Google's sites around the world. The Doodle team meets to decide what events will be celebrated with a doodle. Fans can even send in their own ideas to proposals@google.com.
If you have a favorite doodle it can even be bought in the Google Doodle store and placed on a shirt or accessory.
