About

Google Guitar is a decoration of the Google logo, known as a "Google doodle"^[1], that is an interactive guitar made with a combination of JavaScript, HTML5 Canvas, CSS, and Flash designed by Kristopher Hom, Joey Hurst and Ryan Germick. It was made to commemorate the 96th birthday of Les Paul, an American musician and inventor who died in 2009. Videos of people using the guitar to perform songs became a fad on YouTube while it was live on Google's homepage.

Les Paul

Les Paul was born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9th, 1915, and died Aug. 12, 2009. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is known for innovative recording techniques including overdubbing, multitracking, and delay. He built the first eight-track multitrack recorder, and a a guitar known as "The Log". The Gibson Les Paul electric guitar is one of the most popular electric guitars in the world.

Spread

Several "Google Guitar" Facebook fan pages^[2] have been created, the most popular of which gained over 60 thousand likes within a matter of hours and after one day had reached over 100,000.^[3]

The doodle has been covered by various sites including The Huffington Post^[4], PCWorld^[5], Engadget^[6], ABC News^[7], and CNET.^[8]

Due to it's popularity, Google extended the guitar logo for another day on June 10th and gave the guitar a permanent home.^[9]

On Twitter

Videos

Users began recording videos of songs played with the guitar in their browser window, and uploaded them to YouTube. By June 10th there were over 3,000 results when searching for "google guitar" on YouTube.^[10]

External References

^[1] Google – Doodles

^[2] Facebook – Google Guitar

^[3] Facebook – I played the Google Guitar on 09/06/11

^[4] The Huffington Post – google guitar

^[5] PCWorld – Les Paul Guitar Google Doodle Plays an Encore

^[6] Engadget – Google doodle lets you play a recordable guitar ditty in honor of Les Paul

^[7] ABC News – Guitar Chords: Google Logo is Guitar Tuner in Honor of Les Paul

^[8] CNET – Google's Les Paul doodle rocks the Web

^[9] Google – Google Les Paul

^[10] YouTube – google guitar