Google celebrates 20 years of Doodles with a trip down memory lane

From Burning Man and Bastille Day to Pac Man and Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Google Doodle has spent 20 years drawing our attention to events and historic occasions.

More than 2,000 of the colourful illustrations of the Google Logo have been created over two decades, but the first was a simple "out of office" message. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were off to the Burning Man festival in Nevada, signifying their status with a stick figure behind the second "o" in the logo.

Since then, the logo has been changed to honour scientists, musicians, civil rights leaders and authors, and celebrate various holidays around the world. St Patrick’s Day got its first Doodle in 2000, with the Doodle’s going animated later that year for halloween.

By 2010, the Doodles had taken a more complex turn, with Pac Man becoming the first interactive game, and in 2011, Google celebrated Charlie Chaplin’s 122nd birthday with its first live action Doodle.

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Google has also turned it into a competition for kids, with the Doodle 4 Google giving primary and secondary school students the chance to have their illustration featured on their local Google page.

To celebrate the milestone, Google has dedicated the Doodle to the two decades. But that's not all. On Google Maps, you can go and find the original Google Garage and take a step back in time to when it was Google's Worldwide headquarters, complete with neon signs and Harvard jackets.