Happy birthday, Google: Search giant honors its own 23rd birthday with new doodle

Google's latest doodle is celebrating an important birthday: its own.

The search giant is serving up a special birthday cake Monday in honor of its birth 23 years ago.

An animated doodle available on google.com features a smiling cake with a "23" and a single candle representing the "L" in the logo. The remaining letters are covered with chocolate icing and sprinkles.

According to Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page met in 1997 at Stanford University, when Brin was scheduled to give potential graduate student Page a tour of campus. One year later, after building the first prototype of the search engine, Google Inc. was created.

Since then, Google has expanded well beyond search, offering apps like Gmail, Google Apps, and productivity tools like Google Docs. The company has also jumped into hardware from Nest Wi-Fi routers to its own smartphone, the Google Pixel.

Google's doodle has provided several opportunities for the tech giant to celebrate its birthday. Last year, amid a quarantined 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google created a birthday doodle featuring a Zoom-style party.

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Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.