Happy Holidays from Google (And from us too!)

Google’s holiday Doodle has finally arrived after being spotted around the world over the last two days. The early timing of the festive logo in Australia, was unusual and unexplained, but there seems to have been be two versions it – one static and, today, one animated, which also plays jingle bells. If you can’t play it in your browser for any reason here is a video of the Doodle in action.

Apart from the musical and animated contents of today’s Google Doodle, it is also especially unusual because the search term that the doodle links to is more like a greeting rather than a term one might normally search for.

It’s almost like Google is inviting the entire web to wish one another Happy Holidays and let the search engine surface all the different messages.

Google has really been spoiling us this year with holiday fun. There was the Let it Snow “easter egg” on Google search, and now there is a snowflake button on YouTube to make it snow in your videos. It’s not clear how to activate it (as the snowflake button does not appear at first), but watch a few videos and do a few searches and it seems to appear.

Google Voice and YouTube have also had “send a call from Santa” feature. If you haven’t tried it yet, it works a bit like Xtranormal and you can script your own animated letter from Santa. There are already quite a few ‘creative’ uses of it on YouTube – such as this “Gangsta Style” version.

And with regards to Santa himself, be sure to check out the NORAD Santa tracker. It seems that Santa is already on his way.

What technology might Santa be using to fulfill his mission? He may be using Siri, as in this amusing ad from Apple (checkout the number of appointments he has to keep at the end, but some Googlers also offered him some advice in this rap video below – which cleverly incorporates a mention of every single Google product.

So, with all the festivities already begun, it only remains for me to say, that on behalf of the entire team of expert contributors and editorial staff at SEW, we would like to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas (and to those of you who don’t celebrate Christmas, then have a great holiday weekend)!

Have fun!