Saturday, January 1, 2011

Google’s mind boggling New Year’s doodle


Over the last couple of days, I have been baffled by the doodle (logo) on the Google search engine’s home page, where instead of the usual GOOGLE, they have put up the letters GMMXle. After days of scratching my head and feeling extremely stupid, I just had to find out what GMMXle stands for. Who better to ask than Google.com themselves?


My Google search results revealed the answer in a moment and this article gives the answer in a very short and sweet manner. MMXI in Roman numerals is 2011! Very clever because just as in the original name GOOGLE, the second and third letters (OO) are replaced by a set of two identical characters (MM). The X implies that there is a missing letter and if your guess is better than mine, it becomes obvious that the missing letter is (G). The Roman numeral I looks like the ordinary lower case letter l so that fits in well as the fifth letter of the word Google. Add a G at the beginning and an e at the end of it all–then hey presto, you have spelt Google! Add the fireworks display and you have a Happy 2011 message from Google!


Am I feeling even more stupid now for not having figured it out myself? I did at first but then I decided I am not going to do that to myself. I am just an ordinary blogger who uses the normal alphabet to say Happy New Year. The boffins at Google on the other hand get paid a fortune to be brilliant and come up with such creative, artistic, pun-loaded Happy New Year’s codes. So there you have it, Google wishes you a happy new year and so do we here at Mthoko Says.


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2 comments:

  1. Happy New Year Mthoko! I hope 2011 is a great year for you. Thanks for solving the google mystery.

    http://rantersbox.blogspot.com

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  2. @Empress, thanks a lot, but I think Google takes the credit for solving its own mystery!

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