Google shows HTML5 love with bouncing balls

Google’s line of ‘doodle’ home page designs has taken an eye-catching twist with the debut of an interactive bouncing ball design designed to show off the greatness of HTML5.

In Google’s search page design for the day, as the cursor is moved around the page, the Google logo disintegrates into colourful, scattering and enlarging balls, an interactive feature that demonstrates the way html5 can render visual elements that usually require individual browser plug-ins.

The open standards-based but immature html5 is rivalled by Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash, and Microsoft’s less ubiquitous and proprietary Silverlight. Google has embraced Flash on services such as YouTube, but is otherwise a big fan of HTML5 on Gmail, hence the attention-seeking demo.

The superficial similarity of Google’s bouncing balls to last week’s 25^th anniversary of the discovery of Buckminsterfullerene C60 carbon is probably a coincidence. Google also celebrated that on its search page, as has become its way of communicating events it considers of cultural significance.  

The ‘doodles’ are important to the way Google wants to present itself, and allows the company to associate its logo directly with notable events, anniversaries and people. The company reportedly has an entire team in its Mountain View HQ dedicated to creating them.