Gandhi’s Head Starring as the “G” in Google Today
by Kara Swisher
Posted on October 2, 2009 at 1:14 AM PT
For the last month or so, the Google homepage has played with the famous colored-letter logo by morphing it into a sci-fi in-joke and later adding another “l” to indicate the company’s 11th birthday.
The former–which included logos with alien spaceships and crop circles–was to honor writer H.G. Wells, author of “War of the Worlds” and other science fiction.
Now, a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi–the Indian leader whose 140th birthday anniversary is today–has become the “G” in the logo. (If you click on the image, it links to a search for his last name.)
While the impulse to do so seems hard to resist, I am not quite sure I much like Google (GOOG)–even with good intentions to educate and honor–using the image of one of the world’s great political leaders and peace advocates as a letter on a search service homepage, even if it will be seen worldwide.
(The poor Gosselin kids as a “G”? Oprah as an “O”? Liza Minelli as an “L”? I am totally down with that!)
Then again, I might be a tad grumpy on this issue since I also didn’t like Gandhi’s photo being used in that “Think Different” Apple (AAPL) marketing campaign more than a decade ago, which made him seem like some sort of advertising pitchman.
In any case, here’s the real thing to truly appreciate his impact on this world–Gandhi’s actual voice in his famous “One World” speech in 1931:
Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
