To celebrate two decades of Doodles, Google is revisiting 20 notable examples in a slideshow. Google even saw a VR Doodle nominated for an Emmy award. The Doodles themselves have evolved from the simple turkey clip art used in 1998's Thanksgiving Day Doodle to include illustrated, animated and interactive-game variations of the company's logo.

In the past two decades, the artists on the Doodle team have created thousands of Doodles for countries around the world. 'Nowadays, many users excitedly anticipate the release of each new doodle and some even collect them.'

'When doodles were first created, nobody had anticipated how popular and integral they would become to the Google search experience,' a corporate history of the Doodle recalls. They've celebrated Pac-Man's anniversary, Copernicus' birthday, Mother's Day and the World Cup, as well as reminding us of lesser-known real-world heroes.

Since then, the idea of adding colorful graphics to Google's logo to highlight notable people, events, holidays and anniversaries has taken off, spawning its own following among web users. The first Doodle appeared in 1998, when Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to spoof the traditional 'out of office' sign by placing the Burning Man logo over the second 'O' in the company's corporate logo while the two were at the annual arts festival in the Nevada desert. It's been 20 years since the first Google Doodle appeared on the company's home page, and the web giant is marking the occasion with a walk down memory lane.

The doodle guy