What better way to celebrate a birthday than smashing a piñata? On September 27, 2013, Google turned 15 and marked the occasion with its first-ever playable birthday Doodle — an addictive little game that had hundreds of millions of people whacking a virtual piñata instead of doing actual work. The candy wasn’t real, but the fun definitely was.
The Doodle transforms the Google letters into bouncy animated characters watching the festivities. When you click play, a star-shaped piñata in Google’s signature colors drops down, and the lowercase “g” appears blindfolded and wielding a stick, ready to take swings. You get 10 attempts to smash that piñata and collect as much candy as possible. Timing matters — hit it right when it swings into range and you’ll knock out way more sweets than a mistimed flail. Music plays throughout to keep the party atmosphere going, and Google-colored candy wrappers pile up in the backyard scene as you rack up your score.
Google’s birthday itself has a quirky history. The company was actually incorporated on September 4, 1998, the domain was registered on September 15, 1997, and Google officially launched on September 7, 1998. But since 2005, Google has celebrated on September 27 — and nobody’s entirely sure why. As Google themselves admitted in the Doodle description: “When’s Google’s birthday? I’m not sure even we know.” What we do know is that it all started in a garage in Menlo Park, California, where Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin turned their research project (originally called “BackRub”) into a company that would change the internet forever. They named it after “googol,” the mathematical term for a one followed by a hundred zeros.
The Doodle was built using HTML5, making it playable on smartphones and tablets as well as desktops. Google also released a fun Easter egg alongside the game — typing “Google in 1998” into the search bar transported you back to the clunky, chunky homepage design from the company’s early days, complete with the original blaring logo and simple blue links. On the same day, from that very same Menlo Park garage where it all began, Google announced its Hummingbird algorithm update — one of the biggest search overhauls in years. But let’s be honest, most people were too busy chasing high scores on that piñata game to notice.
How To Play Google Birthday Piñata Doodle
- Click the play button on the birthday cake to start the game and drop the star-shaped piñata
- Press the spacebar or click your mouse to make the blindfolded “g” swing its stick at the piñata
- Time your swings carefully — hitting the piñata at the right moment releases more candy
- You have 10 attempts to score as many points as possible before the game ends
- After finishing, share your score on Google+ or hit play again to try and beat your record
