Google celebrates 13th birthday today

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Google is now a teenager. Boy oh boy, where did the time go?

The Internet search engine celebrates its 13th birthday today with a Google Doodle sporting colorful party hats as it is poised to blow out the candles on its birthday cake.

The Google Doodle was born way back in 1998, part of Google right from the start. Since then, Google Doodle-watching has become a pastime for many Internet visitors -- regardless of which browser they favor. (For the uninitiated, Google Doodles are those colorful images layered over Google’s home page logo.)

PHOTOS: Goodle doodles birthdays

Usually, the Google Doodle honors birthdays, anniversaries and pop culture moments -- but it also keeps everyone guessing by straying into the obscure and offbeat. During a stretch this summer it honored St. Basil’s 450th birthday and noted other countries’ Independence Day celebrations along with our very own Fourth of July.

You might be wondering how the exact date for Google’s birth was chosen. According to some benchmarks, Google could be 14 or 15 if you go by the company’s history and use 1996 as the year when Google’s little-known predecessor, BackRub, was launched. Or the following year, when founders adopted the word ‘Google,’ could be the launch point.

But when you’re as big as Google, you get to decide such things, and the Powers That Be within Google have determined that today is its 13th birthday. And it does look like 13 candles on the cake, right?

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-- Rene Lynch
twitter / renelynch