The Story of Google Doodles
Valentine's Day: Feb. 14, 2007
"It was a design decision," says Hwang "to have the strawberry represent the G and the stem represent the L. But I guess the stem was too short and people didn't make the connection. I was getting phone calls in the middle of the night after it went up saying we forgot the L. So I knew it was going to be a long day."
"The connections our users came up with to figure out the meaning of the missing L were amazing—things I wouldn't have thought of in my wildest dreams—like it was a tribute to the 16th century poet Barnabe Googe. Apparently he wrote quite often about unrequited love. Some made a connection to a bassist Debbie Googe, part of My Bloody Valentine. So many theories were going around that we had to put out an official company blog post to users telling them that the stem was the L."