Google's Logo Dives 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (with Accelerometer Support)

Frederic Lardinois

Feb 7, 2011 — 1 min read

It isn’t quite the Pacman doodle, but today’s version of Google’s iconic logo introduces a whole new degree of interactivity to the animated logos the company sometimes produces for special occasions. Just in time for Jules Verne’s 183rd birthday, the company produced a whimsical logo that allows you to steer the submarine from Verne’s famous novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” with the help of your laptop’s or tablet’s built-in accelerometer. You can also play along by using the keyboard.

My Laptop has an Accelerometer?

Quite a few people will likely be surprised that their laptops have built-in accelerometers and that their browsers can access these (most modern MacBooks should work just fine, for example). As for browsers, today’s doodle works best on the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox. We also tested it on an iPad, where it worked perfectly well (though you probably want to lock the screen rotation).

The doodle really isn’t so much a game as a showcase for what developers can do with the help of modern browsers and web technologies like CSS3. The folks on Reddit will be happy to hear that Google’s ocean includes more than one narwhal.

Google 20000 leagues under the sea verne

Here are the images Google used to create the 3D effect in the doodle:

Return From the Cloud

Renting servers in the cloud isn't cheap. Traditionally, the argument has been that it's still cheaper than buying your own hardware and having a dedicated staff managing servers. Plus, you get to benefit from the innovations that Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Co. are bringing to market.

The Stack Overfloweth

Another busy week in tech news, but mostly in areas outside of my immediate beat (goodbye, Apple Car), allowing me to focus on just a few stories and even get out of the house for a few in-person meetings. This week, I got to chat with GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke.

🤔The one where I ask questions and have no answers

One nice thing about writing a newsletter is that it’s a break from the day-to-day hustle to get stories out of the door. It’s also a chance to go back to some older stories and see how they played out – and sometimes it only takes a week for

Gemini Season

The last few months have been rough for the news business. I was going to write something about that last week, but then it was TechCrunch's time to get hit with a round of layoffs (my team and I got spared, thankfully). The company also shut down our

My Laptop has an Accelerometer?

Read more

Return From the Cloud

The Stack Overfloweth

🤔The one where I ask questions and have no answers

Gemini Season