/ 7 May 2014

A doodle from Google for Elections 2014

The world's most popular search engine has produced a "Google doodle" to mark South Africa's fifth democratic elections.
The world's most popular search engine has produced a "Google doodle" to mark South Africa's fifth democratic elections.

A ballot box in the colours of the South African flag formed the centre of Google’s doodle on Wednesday, with the individual letters of the internet search engine’s name picking up colours of the flag.

The world’s most popular search engine replaced the “g” in its logo with a ballot box, decorated with the South African flag. A ballot, one square marked with an “x”, hovered over the box.

When a user clicks on the logo, they are taken to a page with search results for “South African Election Day”.

The doodle was born when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin played with the logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert in 1998. There have been over 2 000 doodles since then, celebrating events and anniversaries.

Google, which is younger than South Africa’s first democratic government, now has a team of doodlers and engineers dedicated to designing doodles for special occasions, including individual users’ birthdays.