The Google logo remained unadorned until 2000, when they asked their intern at the time (now head webmaster Dennis Hwang) to create a Doodle for Bastille Day. In 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin went to Burning Man and placed a small stick figure behind the second “o”, letting users know they were out of the office and deep in the desert. The idea of swapping out Google's logo for a “doodle” started before the company even incorporated. This is pretty indicative of Google’s Doodle philosophy: simple, fun, and a bit of history and personality thrown in for good measure.

The description of the Doodle talked about senior Google designer Marcin Wichary’s childhood growing up watching his dad fix video game machines, and the “geopolitical” reach of this simple game at the time.

The iconic Google letters were configured into the classic narrow passageways with neon dots, and when users clicked “insert coin” they could revisit their arcade days and play a round (or two or three or five) of Pac-Man. On May 21, 2010, Googlers were greeted with the first-ever interactive Google Doodle: a celebration of 30 years of Pac-Man.

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