BAHRAIN’S 51st National day was commemorated by internet tech giant Google on its localised homepage yesterday in the form of one of its well-known ‘Doodles.’
For the fifth year in a row, the search engine’s home page logo was replaced with a dedicated animated graphic featuring the kingdom’s red-and-white flag.
In addition, when the logo was clicked, users were taken to a search results page with information about the National Day, with animated fireworks lighting up their screen.
“Today’s Doodle celebrates Bahrain National Day,” the company noted on its Doodle explanation page.
“National Day celebrations span two days, as the sound of violins and rebabs fill the air with traditional Khaleeji music.
“Majestic fireworks, cultural concerts, acrobatic performances, magic, and laser shows entertain people until sun down.
“In the evening, colourful lights illuminate up to half a mile of city streets and walkways.
“Buildings across the country are decorated with national flags – like the one found in today’s Doodle.
“Happy National Day, Bahrain!”
Bahrain’s National Day has previously featured amongst Google’s Doodles in 2011, 2013, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, making this year the eighth time the day was marked.
Bahrain shares its National Day with Kazakhstan, with individual doodles created for the two countries and, based on location, shown to users on the Google home page.
The concept of the Doodle was born in 1998 when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin changed the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.
“They placed a stick figure drawing behind the second ‘o’ in the word Google, and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were ‘out of office’,” the company explained.
“Two years later, Larry and Sergey asked webmaster Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day. It was so well received by our users that Dennis was appointed Google’s chief doodler and doodles started showing up more and more regularly on the Google homepage.
“Doodles is now the responsibility of a team of talented illustrators (we call them doodlers) and engineers. For them, creating doodles has become a group effort to enliven the Google homepage and bring smiles to the faces of Google users around the world.”
In total, Google has created more than 5,000 doodles for its homepages around the world.
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