Hurdle through cyberspace with today's Google Doodle
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Haven't felt Olympics frenzy yet? Today's Google Doodle will have you up and running.
If you're on Google any time today, be sure to press the "play" button on the home page. You'll jump right into an arcade-style Olympic hurdling game. Increase your speed down the track by pressing the left and right arrow keys. Jump over the hurdles by pressing the space bar. Then click on the final screen to see the search results for "London 2012 hurdles."
Once you've finished the race, share your times and scores on Google's social network, Google+.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This is just the latest of Google's Olympic-themed Doodles. Since the start of the London games, the homepage has donned archery, fencing, shot put, and synchronized swimming Doodles.
In fact, the doodle team has created hundreds of doodles for Google.com in the United States, and over 700 have been designed internationally, Google claims -- the first back in 1998 to celebrate the Burning Man festival.
A stick figure drawing was placed behind the 2nd "o" in the company name, and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were “out of office.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Since then, the doodles have become far more popular, some taking the Internet by storm: A Les Paul doodle one year ago allowed surfers to play a stylized, interactive guitar -- and even record the songs created. A Pac-Man doodle from May of 2010 was so popular it reportedly cost companies $120 million in wasted downtime.
The old doodles are all archived at Google.com, meaning you can still play the Pac-Man doodle online -- just don't let your boss catch you.