Here is the conservative claptrap:

"It's kind of sad. They change their logo for all sorts of holidays and occasions. Just last week they paid tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday. But Memorial Day doesn't seem to rate anything at all."

"If you're going to choose to commemorate some really quite bizarre occasions, and never, never in their history, never once commemorating Memorial Day, which is a very significant holiday in the United States, I think that says something about who Google is,"

It seems obvious what Google is trying to do. They are trying to lavish attention on days that they feel are important, or people's birthdays who they feel made an important contribution to the culture at large, but which are typically ignored. Memorial Day is not typically ignored. It is a national holiday. There are parades galore. Memorial Day does not need Google's attention for people to know it exists. The same cannot be said of Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday, or the aniversary of the invention of the laser.

So what is Google's motivation for doing this? Google wants to brand itself as hip, cutting edge, youth-driven, and different. As Google evolves from a scrappy but successful startup to a corporate bohemoth to a megacorporation feared even by Microsoft, it becomes more and more of a challenge to maintain that hip, youthful image. Google's "doodles" help promote that image. Conservative fuddy-duddys who think that American culture was at its apex in 1950 and want to bring America back to that period probably don't give a rip about Piet Mondran or the World Cup. But those born after 1970 might. And those are the people who Google are trying to appeal to. These are the movers and shakers in the tech industry. These are the people who most reply on the internet for every aspect of their lives.

Google is sending these people a message that is, in effect, this: "Google doesn't cater to the old guard. Google caters to YOU. We're one of you. We felt the pain you felt when Kurt Cobain died. So we'd rather commemorate his birthday than D-Day because Kurt Cobain resonates more with your generation than does D-Day, and becacuse D-Day will still get a hell of a lot more attention anyway"

I think its a brilliant strategy. And the more that conservatives and other buffoons who represent the old guard try to wag their collective finger at Google for not paying appropriate reverence to those occasions that the old guard find sacrosanct, the more Google cements its image as an iconoclast. And for a multibillion dollar corporation such as Google, that is no mean feat to pull off

Very well said. Then again, assuming the Ca in your handle stands for California, you're a hippie from the Left Coast like me, so of course we'd be mere brainwashed pawns in Google's evil plot to destroy America. :-)

Nobody said Globalism would be easy. I agree that it seems that they are trending towards acknolwedging human achievment, not just American achievment. They want to be a Global brand.

achievEment

:-)

Well, I'm from the midwestern "heartland," currently living in the eastern time zone, and I also agree! Well said.

If these right-wingers hate Google so much, why not stop using it? You know, the "free market" approach we hear so much about from them.

In fact, since they so much prefer things as the were back-when, I can recommend the perfect tool for their research: The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature! Libraries still carry it, believe it or not.

"The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature! Libraries still carry it, believe it or not."

Just seeing this sent a cold chill down my spine.

Google LOVES America. Google is going to take over the World!

JT

<link>

"...almost from the beginning, the company caught hell for corrupting Americans with evil doodles."

Corrupting Americans with doodles?

Are you that precarious? That week willed and your godly tennents that easily destroyed?

(Begin dramatic music. Thunder claps in the distance. Enter Charlton Heston crawling through the dessert to the burning bush.)

"Oh Lord! I beg of thee, grant us salvation from the evil doodle creators for they shall destroy us all!"

If you would look then you would see that alot of the doodles are aimed at America only, just because they do not include one holiday doesnt mean that you, as an American, should spit your dummy out. I can't see every Islamic religious day on there, but i can see Easter, and Christmas, but i don't see every Muslim in the world crying about it. If it bothers you so much, write them a letter and tell the site creators that it has upset you that Memorial Day is not included in their doodles, and maybe they will fix it for you.

I don't see how it makes the site any less 'American' though.

I agree. Honoring Father's Day is pretty hip....glad they brought attention to it, cause I hadn't heard much else about it.

www.google.com

The_Five_Arrs:

If you would look then you would see that alot of the doodles are aimed at America only, just because they do not include one holiday doesnt mean that you, as an American, should spit your dummy out. I can't see every Islamic religious day on there, but i can see Easter, and Christmas, but i don't see every Muslim in the world crying about it. If it bothers you so much, write them a letter and tell the site creators that it has upset you that Memorial Day is not included in their doodles, and maybe they will fix it for you.

I don't see how it makes the site any less 'American' though.

It is this last statement that got me engaged enough to join so I could post a few questions I would like to discuss...

What makes Google "American"?

Do we (or can we) associate a nationality to a search engine? How would we do that? According to the nationality of the creators/coders? Or of the location of the headquarters? Or of that of the sites it links you to? Or of that of the majority of users?

Why must Google be "American"?

- A Canadian on the outside looking in

Well, for one thing, "Google" the company is located in "California", which is technically a part of the US though it is known the world over. True, Google is not owned by the collective American public (though it is publicly traded in the US), but its main offices are there and it was founded in the United States. I'd say those were pretty good reasons for it to be considered American. Just because the search engine itself reaches anyone with a non-censored internet connection does not mean the company belongs to the world, any more than an author translated into other languages belongs to the collective.

An American insider in Canada on the outside looking in towards the out

That said, I don't agree with the Conservative views on what Google should and should not have on their web site. However, I don't agree with the previous statement that it is only conservatives who have anything against Google; I know plenty of free-thinkers who think Google is getting to be too much like a MicroSoft with the potential to be Big Brother.

TreSor, please understand I was posing these questions without any malice (your response felt like you thought I was). I am in general very interested in the definition of identity.

I view Google and other similar web based applications (i.e.: Facebook, Wikipedia [or any wiki for that matter]) as non-nationalistic (based upon the international target demographic).

I guess I would pose the same questions regarding Facebook (and other social networking sites). I know that it was created by an American and is headquartered in the States, but must the site be American? Must it have a national label? And by doing so do you discount all the non American users as unimportant, even if they outnumber the Americans?