Google 'Doodles' add more Chinese elements

Launched in China, Malaysia, South Korea, Brunei and Singapore, the game is an upgrade from last year's still image, Yuan said. The Doodle team designed all kinds of bridges for the game, and eventually decided on the final look after 11 draft changes.

Although every Doodle entails much the same design time, but Doodle engineer and Chinese team director Wang Yonggang said he enjoys doing it.

"It is fun — for me and for everyone," he says.

The first Doodle started with a fun idea. In 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin placed a?human figure drawing?behind the second "o" in the logo, sending a comical message to their users that they were "out of the office" to attend the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada Desert, just in case the servers crashed.

Ever since then, Google has gradually formed a team of illustrators and engineers to regularly brainstorm and decide which events will be celebrated with a Doodle.

On Jan 4, 2010, which was the 367th birthday of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Google's logo was in the shade of an apple tree. When it was clicked, an apple fell from the tree. That was the first time Google featured an interactive Doodle.

A few months later, a 256-level Pac-Man game was on the search engine's home page. The game immediately became a huge hit and still receives about 1 million players every day on Doodle's own website.

In 2011, a playable and recordable Doodle guitar recorded 40 million songs in just 48 hours, which were played back 870,000 times.

On Jan 18, 2012, the first interactive Doodle based on Chinese elements was featured. Wang wrote its codes as the first Chinese Doodle engineer.

It was to celebrate the 112th anniversary of the birthday of Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan, who were the founders of the Chinese cartoon that produced Havoc in Heaven, the landmark Chinese animated film about the Monkey King.