This New Year’s eve, Google has decided to bid farewell to 2014 with an animated Doodle. The Doodle shows the typical colourful Google logo that later transforms into ‘2014’, giving a glimpse of all the trending topics.
First, one will see the bird from the popular game ‘Flappy Bird’ emerge, showing how the game reached the heights of popularity and was one of the most trending topics. Flappy Bird was taken down by Nguyen after he though people were getting too addicted to it. Most were baffled by Nguyen’s choice to abandon a project that was at one time fetching him $50,000 a day through ads, and that was before it hit it reached its peak popularity. Some left him death threats and phones with Flappy Bird installed were being sold for close to $100,000.
The bird then transforms into a bouncing football, clearly pointing to FIFA 2014. In India alone, the buzz around the 2014 FIFA World Cup was far more than what the country has ever witnessed, and it also made to the top trending searches of this year. According to Maxus Insights’ Social Media Statistics, India alone showed a rise of 4.4% in the game, with over 3.5 million engaged users on the Facebook page. Click here to read the top trending searches of 2014 in India.
The Google doodle also paid tribute to space exploration with both Rosetta space mission and India’s Mars Orbiter or mangalyaan mission.
Finally, the Doodle also features the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that saw millions of people around the world pour ice water on their heads in a campaign to raise awareness and money in the fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
From ordinary individuals to the likes of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Twitter founder Dick Costolo and Apple CEO Tim Cook have participated in what’s being called the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ in a bid to raise awareness and funds for the cause.
