The Google Doodle that never was - a tribute to Steve Jobs
Yesterday, the world was in mourning for the loss of the visionary Steve Jobs who, as co-founder, was the very core of Apple Inc and had been at the helm until he stepped down from his post as Chief Executive in August this year due to ill health.
Steve didn’t always see eye to eye with everybody and there have been several highly publicised spats with erstwhile partners but then that is in the nature of a visionary – they see things from a different perspective to others. As with Adobe, Google used to have strong ties with Apple and Eric Schmidt (Google’s current Executive Chairman) served on Apple’s board of directors, whilst CEO at Google. That soon changed when Google announced the launch of the Android Smartphone operating system in direct competition to Apple’s iPhone, which led to Schmidt’s departure from the board and lawsuits being brought against Google for breach of patents.
That legal action is still ongoing but, notwithstanding, Google put aside their rivalry for a day so that they could pay their collective respects to Steve Jobs and his family with the display of a simple low key textual tribute on their homepage beneath the search box which read “Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011″ with a link to the Apple homepage.
Google's tribute to Steve Jobs
Apple displayed a picture of Steve on their homepage with a link to the following commemorative inscription:
Apple's Picture Tribute to Steve Jobs
Apple's tribute to Steve Jobs
However, like many others I was surprised that Google did not display a Google Doodle in commemoration of Steve Jobs and, therefore, I decided to fashion my own:-
Suggested Google Doodle as a tribute to Steve Jobs
I fashioned a second although I suspect that the branding features used in this version might have been unacceptable to Google:
Tribute to Steve Jobs - Google Doodle with Apple Logo, iPhone, Pixar Lamp and Ball
I was not the only one, the following example is by Brian Harnish:
An alternate Google Doodle by Brian Harnish
Here is another by @MikeWehner with a similar theme to my own:
Another Google Doodle Tribute by @MikeWehner
Do you know of any other examples?