This weekend was the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion to liberate Europe, but you wouldn't know it from reading Google. Google chose to use its frequently changing logo to honor the 25th anniversary of the video game Tetris instead of the brave men and women who stormed the beach at Normandy.
As you might expect, a certain subset of political blogs took issue with Google's choices.
Newsbusters.com said:
"This is no departure for Google, a firm that finds it nearly impossible to post images celebrating any American holidays or important milestones in American history. So, what we have here is just one more example of Google's essentially anti-American policies."
World Net Daily said:
"Google's decision to honor Tetris rather than D-Day, however, is only the latest in a string of criticized decisions about how the Internet giant uses its homepage 'doodles' to recognize special occasions... Google has a history of ignoring major American patriotic and religious holidays, while honoring Remembrance Day in Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom, the Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Halloween and other observances."
Some guy named Don Surber said:
"By recognizing the 25th anniversary of Tetris. Its owners may be multi-billionaires but homeless guys show more class."
Google's official response:
"Special logos tend to be lighthearted and often scientific in nature.... We do not believe we can convey the appropriate somber tone through this medium to mark holidays like Memorial Day."
Here's my take on it: Google obviously can't commemorate everything that has ever happened in its logo. In the past, Google honored broad American patriotic holidays like Veteran's Day and July 4th, but when it comes to anniversaries of specific battles in American history, days that aren't National Holidays, Google hasn't marked them. That's Google's prerogative.
As for why they made that decision, it seems pretty clear to me that choosing Tetris over D-Day isn't a dig at D-Day. Anyone who turned on a TV or opened the paper this weekend would already know it was the anniversary of D-Day, but who knew it was the anniversary of Tetris? That's the kind of quirky, fun thing that Google usually alters its logo for, and you can't blame them for keeping things light-hearted. After all, it's just a search engine, not an official arm of the government or the culture.
While Google is an American company, its reach is worldwide, so picking specific, patriotic, American events to commemorate would likely alienate some people in other countries... unless Google commemorated events that are important to each country it serves, which brings me back full circle: Google can't commemorate everything that has ever happened, so they get to pick.
What do you think? Does Google owe it to its readers to commemorate D-Day? Or are people complaining about something trivial because they don't have anything better to do?
Comments
Displaying 1–15 of 15
willy277
and yet, the vast majority of people will still use google as their search engine regardless of this.
aka google wins, cry more
D351
Tetris is more interesting, more important, and more culturally significant. War happens all the time. Tetris only happened once.
westpusher
um, seriously.....people are taking google changing its logo far too seriously. this is almost at the level of people freaking out when their significant other changes their status and they don't know why. for one thing, d-day represents the united states having its hand forced into invading another country to save it in a bloody and terrible war. tetris is a game that was a piece of common ground between russia and the united states and any other countries that ended up playing it. so honoring something that brought people together from many different cultures instead of an even where people were literally and violently torn apart, is in fact far classier. it seems as though the united states has yet again regressed to a point where nationalism is mistaken for patriotism.
implodinggoat
"While Google is an American company, its reach is worldwide, so picking specific, patriotic, American events to commemorate would likely alienate some people in other countries... unless Google commemorated events that are important to each country it serves, which brings me back full circle: Google can't commemorate everything that has ever happened, so they get to pick."
While I'm certainly far from outraged by this (Google is a private company and is entitled to commemorate whatever they please) I find your pretentious PC justification for Google's actions to be logically flawed.
First I would remind you that Englishmen, Australians, and Canadians also participated in the Normandy invasion. Secondly I would point out that the world as a whole owes a debt of gratitude to the men who fought at Normandy for helping to end the scourge of fascism.
Ewoc
um.. yeah... who cares? Their site, and they can do whatever they want. For people to get mad over this retarded notion is beyond common sense....
Discordance
What's Yahoo?
DaBigFatCow
Well I use Yahoo! and Bing so w/e. But I do gotta say that Google should simply have a choice as to what they want to show and say, after all it is their site. If they dont honour D-Day that is unfortuite but its their choice.
badnightmare1204
Hahaha! Mindsale is right XD
master-m12
Google can do what they want. did every other site in the internet honor d day?
Flamespeak
Google can do what they want to with their logo, becuase it is theirs after all. I find it funny, however, that if Google would not have had any change to their logo during the time frame, nobody would have cared in the slightest. To get angry because they chose to call attention to the anniversary of one event over another is just being silly.
KevinJames23
How come google can't put up a separate image based on the user's ip?
mindsale
Let's face the obvious. The surviving soldiers of the Normandy invasion don't even know what Google is, let alone that it's changing its script to commemorate Tetris. Special google fonts prob'ly just make them think they've forgotten their glasses in the macaroni salad again.
Lucifer6972
That's a good point though but still, those bastards got something make em say it to my face. Plus, I think they are just a bit worried about Microsoft and Bang so...I mean, Bing, Bing, LOL!!
Can you imagine? "Hey, why don't you go bang it for me, will you?" LOL!!! That's what we call it here, freaking hilarious.
But alright, I'll give em this one, but they should thank Sjohnson for it.
G4Sterling
Nobody's dishonoring the brave men who died on D-Day by any means. Google is trying to draw attention to a quarter-century of lost productivity.
These guys should chill and try to figure out where to place that square piece.
IcemanMX
People should not get so worked up about this. Those soldiers died for Google's freedom to not honor the people who died for that right. Some people may not think it is classy, but hey, those are probably the same people who think that sending pictures of their ugly-looking family as Christmas cards is a good idea.
-M
Displaying 1–15 of 15
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