Photos: Google's logo doodles through the ages
What's in a name? Impressionism, DNA, fractals, Braille, barcodes and Pac-Man for starters...
In recent years, the Google brand has regularly been ranked more powerful than global megabrands such as Coca-Cola - making the now uber-familiar Google logo one very important piece of web real estate.
Over the decade or so since it's been online, the company logo has shed a few pounds and ditched the youthful exuberance of its early days - as shown above, circa 1998 - becoming the svelte and streamlined six letters we know so well.
But as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt - perhaps one reason why Google has become increasingly creative with its corporate emblem. Officially sanctioned Google Doodles, as they're known, regularly transform the familiar lettering to commemorate national anniversaries, scientific discoveries, holidays, birthdays and more.
"Having a little bit of fun with the corporate logo by redesigning it from time to time is unheard of at many companies but at Google, it is a part of the brand," says Google.
Click through the following pages to see how Google Doodles have evolved over the years...
Image credit: Google
1999
1999 was the year Google outgrew its garage home and migrated first to an office in Palo Alto, and later to its first Mountain View location. The number of employees at the time of its first relocation? A mere eight.
Like the original Google logo, the first Google Doodle which appeared in 1999 was pretty rough round the edges - more stick-man than Dr Seuss.
The Doodle was apparently designed to flag up company founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page's attendance at the alternative culture Burning Man festival in the US.
Image credit: Google
2000
In the year 2000 Google signed a deal with rival search service Yahoo!, becoming its default search provider. The company also launched its AdWords service, ushering in an era of keyword search-based advertising.
Google Doodles properly took off this year, with the summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, providing obvious inspiration for a series of Doodles involving an athletic cartoon kangaroo.
A little more subtle, however, was the Doodle used to flag up the US Presidential elections in November 2000, pictured above.
Image credit: Google
2001
This year saw Eric Schmidt become Google's CEO, and also chairman of the company's board of directors. Product-wise, Google launched image search and announced its first public acquisition: a Usenet discussion service that would become Google Groups.
By 2001 Google was also firmly in the Doodle groove - finding its creative side with an impressionist rendition of its logo shown above - an homage to French painter Claude Monet whose birthday falls on 14 November.
Image credit: Google
2002
In 2002 Google partnered with AOL over search, launched its News service and debuted Google Labs, enabling internet users to play with services that the company is in the process of cooking up.
More artistry was visited on the Google logo in 2002, with Doodles in the style of Picasso (shown above)...
Image credit: Google
... and this quadruple rendition conjuring the pop art of Andy Warhol.
Image credit: Google
2003
In 2003 Google acquired Pyre Labs, creator of the Blogger service. It also launched a service that would later become Google Book Search - opening up another front in its corporate mission to organise the world's information.
More art-themed Doodles graced the Google homepage in 2003 - including this logo guaranteed to please fans of graphic artist and master of the optical illusion, MC Escher, who was born in June 1898.
Image credit: Google
From art to science - Google Doodles in 2003 also included several with a scientific flavour, such as this one commemorating the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA.
Image credit: Google
2004
2004 was also a big year for Google - its IPO took place in August, with an opening price of $85 per share. Today Google shares are valued at just under $500.
The fourth year of the new millennium also saw the company move into its Googleplex campus in Mountain View. Product wise, Google launched Local Search and Desktop Search, and it acquired a digital mapping company called Keyhole - laying the tech groundwork for Google Earth.
Google's logo sported a tiara of fractals in February 2004 - in celebration of the birthday of Gaston Julia, the French mathematician who devised the formula for Julia set fractals.
Image credit: Google
This year also saw Google's Doodles gazing at the sky for inspiration. Here the letter O doubles as the sun - illustrating the transit of the planet Venus across it, an event which occurred in June 2004.
Image credit: Google
2005
In this year the company got serious about navigation with the launch of both Maps and Google Earth. It also launched mobile versions of several of its web services and released Google Talk - a VoIP and IM service.
The folk from Mountain View clearly couldn't resist another fine art pastiche - this 2005 homage to Vincent Van Gogh was used to commemorate the Dutch painter's March birthday.
Image credit: Google
2006
In this year company milestones included the acquision of user-generated video site, YouTube, for $1.65bn and the launch of free citywide wi-fi in Google's Mountain View backyard.
It also bought web-based word processing programme Writely - releasing Google Docs and Spreadsheets later in the year.
Other product launches in 2006 included Picasa, Gmail Chat, Calendar and Google Checkout.
A Braillesque version of the Google logo commemorated Louis Braille's birthday in January 2006.
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In 2006 the company also Doodled its own version of The Scream - the expressionist masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch whose birthday got a nod on the Google homepage in December.
Image credit: Google
2007
The year saw the debut of Street View in five US cities, and the announcement of Android - Google's mobile OS.
Google's 2007 April Fools Doodle linked to a tour de force of toilet humour with the company claiming web users could get free wireless at home by flushing a load of fibre down the khazi...
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This year also saw Google's logo imagined as a melting iceberg in honour of Earth Day. The company got busy with several green initiatives, including completing the installation of solar panels at its Mountain View Googleplex, and pledging to be completely carbon neutral by the end of the year.
Image credit: Google
2008
Corporate milestones in 2008 included the completion of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick and the launch of Chrome, its open source browser.
The first mobile device running Android - the T-Mobile G1 - also went on sale in 2008, just after Google celebrated its 10th birthday.
The invention of the first laser got its 15 minutes of Google-flavoured fame in May of that year when the company logo was rendered in coloured lights.
Image credit: Google
The year also saw Google sharpen its pencil on behalf of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator - which fired up in September 2008, only to break down a few days later.
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2009
The search behemoth continued its wave of product launches in 2009 with a peek at a preview of its forthcoming collaboration tool, Google Wave. It also launched Latitude for social location-sharing on mobile devices, and established Google Ventures: a VC fund for backing tech start-ups.
Much fun was had Doodle-wise in 2009, including this geek-tastic celebration of 25 years of the fiendishly addictive puzzle game Tetris.
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Another inspired Google Doodle celebrated the birthday of Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse code.
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The 40th anniversary of the Moon landings was commemorated in this Doodle. Google also launched Moon in Google Earth - a tool enabling web users to access lunar imagery and info about the Apollo landing sites.
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Inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla's birthday was celebrated in this 2009 Doodle - a man who pioneered research into electromagnetism and helped develop the field of electrical engineering.
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Ever keen to showcase the myriad forms information can take, Google also translated its logo into a barcode in 2009 - celebrating the invention of machine-readable data tags.
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2010
On 14 March this year Google's Doodle gave a mathematical nod to Pi Day.
A few weeks earlier company CEO Eric Schmidt announced Google is prioritising app development on mobile devices, ahead of desktop PCs. Meanwhile its Android OS continues to make its way onto scores of new smartphones.
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Most recently Google stepped up a gear by creating a Doodle-cum-mini-game to celebrate 30 years of iconic ghost-gobbler Pac-Man.
The playable Doodle may have delighted fans of the classic arcade game but it was also apparently responsible for $120m in lost productivity, according to one survey, as office workers around the world clocked off Outlook and Excel and nom-nom-nom-ed their way through as many power-pellets as they could.
Here's to the next decade of Google's Doodles - our money's on Doodles that purr when stroked (one for touchscreen laptops), Etch-a-Sketch-style draw-your-own logos and at least one Google QR code.
Image credit: Google