The Google Doodle team is already working on calendar for 2015

While he sees Doodles as a unique opportunity to showcase emerging browser technologies to the world, he remembers the time when he has to ask users for algorithms that could break the Google logo into as few dots as possible. “The browsers those days were not that good. Finally, someone came up with a suggestion that showed the logo in just 64 dots,” he says.

Hom likes doodles that help us remembers scientists who were not that famous but lets a big impact on our lives with their discoveries. His favourite doodle, however, is the 2012 Indian independence day doodle created by his friends.

The first Google Doodle in 1998, was just Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s way of indicating that they would be attending the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. The next doodle appeared in 2000 to mark Bastille Day and since then hundreds of Google have made the world smile, and think, before they clicked the search button.

While animating doodles, Hom says, he tries to make it as simple as possible. “My grandmother should be able to play and enjoy the doodle. That is very important,” says Hom, who is the first member of the Doodle team to visit India. With Google now putting multiple doodles across different countries on the same day, Hom says the team of around 20 illustrators and engineers end up making close to one doodle a day now. The team is open to suggestions sent on proposals@google.com and receives hundreds of requests every day.

Hom was in India to announce the winner of the 2014 Doodle4Google contest, which was won by Vaidehi Reddy of Pune. She won the contest, themed ‘A place in India I wish to visit’, with a doodle on Assam.