Yoshka's weekend amble

When I first started at Google, my main job was to lie in the courtyard and wait for the UPS man. My dad and I were pretty much the only ones who showed up before 11AM, so we became the de facto receptionists for a while. I'm always very nice to visitors.

When we moved to Mountain View in the summer of 1999, I switched to full-time. I interviewed a lot of people, but no dogs. Fewer of them were online back then, though of course it's hard to tell sometimes. Eventually, I returned to part-time consulting and spent a lot of time watching ducks in a pond near our office. Fascinating, but ultimately unfulfilling.

Now my office is on the third floor. I take the elevator these days, since I injured my right leg last year. There are more dogs at Google now, but many of them are very small, like King Charles Spaniels. And Yorkies. When dad parks me outside the Google cafe, I love getting attention from all the passers-by. They even know my name! And there's barbecue on the patio every day during the summer. Life is good.

Yoshka, Google's Top Dog

Oodles of doodles

One of the things I like best about Google is that we're the kind of company that, when a user writes in to suggest that we honor the once-every-122-years Transit of Venus on our home page, we actually do it!



My name is Dennis, and I'm the guy who draws the Google doodles. But the doodle tradition started here before I did. The first doodle was produced by (who else?) Larry and Sergey, who, when they attended the Burning Man festival in summer 1998, put a little stick figure on the home page logo in case the site crashed and someone wanted to know why nobody was answering the phone. By the time I began an internship here in the summer of 2000, the company was producing doodles on a regular basis. At the time I was a Stanford undergrad majoring in art and computer science, and, although I hadn't been hired to do anything remotely related to logo design, I eventually stumbled into my first doodle gig (Bastille Day, July 2000, for which I did a fairly boring flag motif).

And I've done all the doodles ever since; I've produced almost 150 by now. The doodles are only a small part of my actual job (as Google's international webmaster, I'm responsible for managing all our international site content, which keeps me plenty busy), but it's definitely my favorite. Holding up my mockups and then holding my breath while Larry and Sergey do their "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" emperor thing is never boring, and I love the fact that my little niche within this company turned out to be something so cool and creative and, well, Google-y.

What doodles will I be doing next? Well, telling you in advance would spoil the fun of it, and I have no idea anyway. If you've got any ideas of your own, feel free post them in the Web Search Help Forum. Who knows; you may just make a little Google history yourself.

-- Dennis Hwang

Update August 2009: Contact information updated; date and link corrected for first doodle.

It's not rocket science (or maybe it is)

"Though women represent nearly half the U.S labor force and more then half of all undergraduates, just 18% of scientists and engineers employed in industry are women and only about 20% of students graduating with majors in engineering, physics, computer science, and similar fields are women." This may not be surprising news, and that's a problem. But the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology is working on a host of programs that can change these numbers.

Google participates with the Institute to recognize outstanding women students in computer science and technology through the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships. The Institute has just announced the 2004 winners: eight women who have each won $10,000 scholarships, and 11 more honorees who receive $1,000 scholarships.

We salute the winners. May all their successes inspire lots of other women and girls to pursue their (technical) dreams.

Breda Murphy