Google opened its first office in Dublin in 2003 with just five employees. To mark 20 years in Ireland, the company has launched a competition focusing on a significant addition Google has made to our browsing experience — the Google Doodle.
Doodles are the fun, surprising and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries and the lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists. The Doodle has always been synonymous with Google and so, to celebrate its 20th anniversary here, Google is holding a Google Doodle art competition open to primary school students from third to sixth class.
The competition will invite children across Ireland to submit their own Doodle creation based on what they think Ireland will look like in 20 years' time. Twenty winners will then be selected to attend a Google Doodle masterclass at Google Dublin.
The lucky young doodlers will attend a workshop with a master doodler Matthew Cruickshank on November 1 in Google Dublin. Cruickshank, a professional doodler, will travel from Google HQ in Mountain View, California to meet the young artists and give them a taste of what life is like at Google and what it takes to become a master doodler.
So how did the Google Doodle first come about? Back in 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin placed a stick figure drawing behind the second "o" in the word Google. The revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were "out of office" to attend Burning Man Festival. Nowadays, creating doodles is the responsibility of a team of talented illustrators (or doodlers ) and engineers who get together regularly to brainstorm and decide which events will be celebrated with a doodle. The doodle selection process aims to celebrate interesting events and anniversaries that reflect Google's personality and love of innovation.
Parents and guardians of third to sixth class students can enter students into the competition at sites.google.com/view/doodle-masterclass/home
