Google Doodle: Newspaper, Coffee, and Hug Make for Good Father's Day

Google knows what the best Father's Day gifts are -- relaxing in an armchair while reading the newspaper, a cup of coffee served up by a robot, and a hug from your child to top it off. The Internet search leader's website has a special doodle displaying the theme. Head over to Google.com on Sunday and you can see the doodle created to honor Father's Day. The "L" in the company's logo plays Dad, and sits in an armchair reading the paper. A remote-controlled robot brings him a cup of coffee while the letter "e," who plays a kid, sneaks out from behind the chair with the remote in hand, culminating in a hug while the rest of the letters show up in grey to complete the search giant's name. It's not the first time Google has created a doodle to commemorate a special day. Over the years, the company has enlisted its artists to craft scads of them -- some simple, like Sunday's iteration, which just takes you to a search results page for "Father's Day" if you click on it, to highly interactive ones, such as a Web-based playable Moog synthesizer, which recently honored Robert Moog, a music pioneer responsible for the modern electronic synthesizer. According to sites such as Wikipedia and History.com, topmost search results if you click on the doodle, Father's Day was founded in 1910 after a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd heard a sermon about Mother's Day, which was started by Anna Jarvis (a weird story, by the way). Even so, the occasion wasn't officially recognized as a holiday in the United States until 1972. Now, the third Sunday in June honors fathers in dozens of countries around the world. In fact, the doodle you can enjoy Sunday in the U.S. was live in countries like Japan a day ago because of time zone differences. While some might wonder why a new doodle counts as news considering Google has made so many of them over the years, the fact remains that plenty of people still get a kick out of them. And for the search giant, it works out to be a pretty good way to get lots of people to check out its site.