What the Heck Is Up With Those Google Balls?

By: David Morgan
Topics: In The News

(Credit: google.com)

Google's homepage illustrations marking notable holidays and anniversaries (like Magritte's birthday or the launch of the Hubble telescope) are playful divertissements that usually link to a page explaining those not readily evident.

But on Tuesday visitors to the Internet search engine were confronted with a bizarre animation of morphing, colliding balls that swept across the page wherever the cursor passed over them.

While Google usually allows users to click on the illustrations to take them to information about the subject matter (in case you didn't know who Sabiha Gokcen is), the nature of today's illustration makes that impossible — whenever a cursor passes over the illustration, it morphs and moves away, thanks to Javascript and HTML 5 programming.

Google is therefore inviting a lot of web traffic from people merely trying to find out what the illustration means — if it in fact means anything.

Five of the top seven Google search terms this morning were "google logo," "google balls," "google logo hidden message," "google homepage today," and "google dots."

Google itself isn't saying — their directory of Google Doodle art's last listing is for September 4, when they celebrated the 25th anniversary of buckyballs.

The Art of Google Doodles
Gallery of Google Doodles Artwork

Bloggers guessing about the home page art's meaning have suggested it's a demonstration of new browser capabilities, such as CSS4 scripting language.

But it could also be a birthday celebration of itself. Although the domain name google.com was registered on Sept. 15, 1997, and the company incorporated on Sept. 4, 1998, Google previously celebrated its birthday with Google art on Sept. 7, in 2003 (5 years) and 2004 (6 years).

Happy 12th Birthday, Google!

David Morgan
David Morgan is a senior editor at CBSNews.com and cbssundaymorning.com.

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by google-home-page March 9, 2011 12:27 PM EST: I think it's great that Google does this. No other search engine really can compete with them. I just saw their homepage at http://hubpages.com/hub/google-home-page It was in 1998 though... it looked pretty bad compared to it now lol; Reply to this comment


by azure13 September 9, 2010 12:16 PM EDT: unbelievable... most viewed story. yeesh.; Reply to this comment


by evoactivity September 9, 2010 12:14 PM EDT: HTML5? Errr. Try Javascript and CSS3.

no html5 here, hundreds and hundreds of lazy journalists spreading misinformation.; Reply to this comment

by herbg3 September 7, 2010 9:31 PM EDT

Well, if you visit no person committee dot org and read the bottom post, you'll see where this "amazing" idea came from. Or, search Google for "dotsnotgoogle", an applet I wrote in 2005 that went viral in 2006. No credit or mention of me -- probably because Google just likes to take the free candy and doesn't pay for dinner.

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by jfb100 September 7, 2010 11:27 PM EDT: Dude, it is a *similar* effect (not identical) but the Google animation appears to be written in javascript while the "dots not google" demos are clearly Java applets (a completely different programming language). In my opinion, "inspired" might be a better description at best.

However, I remember writing a science fiction story 10 years about aliens who lived in a giant tree on a planet with low gravity and Earth people came to the planet and destroyed the tree and their home. I just figured Cameron came up with a similar idea all on his own. :)


by ToolMangler1 September 7, 2010 8:15 PM EDT: I love it!!! Thanks Google..; Reply to this comment


by ToolMangler1 September 7, 2010 7:59 PM EDT: I love it!!! Thanks Google..; Reply to this comment

by rwsmith29456 September 7, 2010 6:53 PM EDT

Unnecessary, distracting, waste of resources.

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by MalloryDavis September 8, 2010 3:30 AM EDT: It does use a lot of water...


by YouAreDumb64 September 8, 2010 3:34 PM EDT: Lmao. Idiot. I HATE FUN THINGS ILL GO COMMENT ON CBS NEWS.


by longtree-2009 September 7, 2010 6:02 PM EDT: annoying is the word.; Reply to this comment

by jfb100 September 7, 2010 3:13 PM EDT

Well if you tilt your computer, then the balls re-arange to spell "Paul is Dead" or "Cranberry Sauce".

Seriously, Dudes, Google is heavily involved in drafting the new HTML5 spec

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

Also, check out a demo of some interactive bubble HTML5 animation

http://3.paulhamill.com/node/39

This is, I am sure, Google's way of advertising the future and that Google is helping define that future.

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