Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is celebrating its 15th birthday this year with a couple of games. One is a fun piñata game which uses the letters of Google’s name, while the other enables users to search the web in retro-style by giving them a glimpse of Google throughout the years.
Google’s actual birthday is a mystery
One of the interesting things about Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s birthday is the fact that no one knows exactly what date it is, except that it’s in September sometime. According to IBN Live, the Sept. 27 date seems to have been selected out of convenience.
Until 2005, the search giant celebrated its birthday on Sept. 7. Then in 2005, it changed the date to Sept. 27 because that’s when it announced the record number of pages Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) was indexing. Of course you could look to the date when the company itself was incorporated, but that’s a bit of a question mark too, since IBN Live reports that Google’s website once said that the company was incorporated on Sept. 7, 1998. But at some point, the date was changed to Sept. 4 without any explanation.
Google posts a piñata game
This year for Google’s 15th birthday, the company is posting an interactive piñata game. The goal is to hit the piñata in order to get the candy that’s inside of it to fall out. Those who want to play Google’s digital version of the popular Mexican birthday party game control the stick using their spacebar, their mouse or the touchscreen of their mobile device.
In the game, the letters forming the Google name look like party guests. The second g is the one playing the game, and there’s a birthday cake with the number 15 on the top of it.
Google goes retro
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is also offering a blast from the past by enabling users to see what it was like to use the search engine years ago. Just go to Google.com and type in “Google in 1998” or whatever year you want to go back to. The results will show up in a way that looks just like Google did in the year that was given. There’s also a link at the top to “Take me back to 2013.”
