Google's ominous homepage New Year's countdown

Instead I came across an ominous, Easter egg-like countdown which is slowly ticking downwards from one and a half million presumably towards zero.

The countdown ticks down every second, and through the help of an online time converter, it seems to be counting down to the stroke of midnight on New Years Day, signalling the start of 2010.

But Google have never done this before. Why a countdown now? Is it counting down towards not only the most obvious event of New Year's but perhaps something new? Could the stroke of midnight be the smoke signal for something new, daunting and devious for the company?

Even though the company has a long history of pranks up its sleeve already, according to the Telegraph, but this blogger suspects it may well just be a simple countdown to the start of the new year.

We shall soon see, anyway. Feel free to throw in your own conspiracy theories, you crazy people.