Google doodle brings the New Year’s Eve party to you, elephant style

In annual Google tradition, the tech giant's doodle team has created a colorful animated illustration to get you in the New Year's Eve party mood.

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Last year, it was a group of feathery bird friends admiring the fireworks. This time around, it's a pair of purple elephants donning party hats and blowing up colorful balloons.

The search engine’s creative tradition dates back to 1998, before Google was even incorporated.

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According to the company itself, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin played around with the corporate logo "to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert."

Credit: Google

Credit: Google

“They placed a stick figure drawing behind the 2nd ‘o’ in the word, Google, and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were ‘out of office.’ While the first doodle was relatively simple, the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was born.”

Now Google has an entire team of illustrators and engineers dedicated to “enliven the Google homepage and bring smiles to the faces of Google users around the world.”

Here’s a look back at some of the most popular 2018 doodles we covered:

Explore more doodles at google.com/doodles.