Google logo mystery solved – celebrating H.G. Wells’ birthday

Google has intrigued a few of us (with no lives) over the past few weeks with a series of logo changes and strange tweets all about aliens and strange goings-on. There were many theories as to what the search giant was up to but all has now been explained. And to be honest, it’s all a little bit dull when all is said and done.

It all started with a change to the Google logo on Sept. 5 which showed a UFO transporting the second O in Google away to God only knows where. Bizarrely, there was no explanation of the logo but clicking on it took you to a search for ‘Unexplained Phenomenon’ which was filled with tales of alien abductions and the paranormal.

This was accompanied by a tweet on Google’s official Twitter page which read “1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19″ and was translated into “All your O are belong to us” using the simple A=1, B=2 etc. cipher.

Then it happened again 10 days later in what can only be described as a moment of deja vu. This time, the Google logo became a series of crop circles and clicking on it took you to a search for ‘Crop Circles’.

A new tweet followed, this time reading, “51.327629, -0.5616088,” which was soon discovered to be map coordinates for Horsell Common in England. Which, seeing as that’s where the first aliens landed in H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds, lead many to conclude this was where the solution to the game of cat and mouse lay.

And that has proved to be correct. Today, Sept. 21 would have been H.G. Wells’ 143rd birthday, and that is what this has all been leading up to. Google revealed the (admittedly slightly disappointing) truth in a post on the Official Google Blog late last night.

The original “all your O are belong to us” was indeed a nod to the Japanese video game, Zero Wing, as many had suggested. And the whole thing was just a fun way of celebrating the life and work of an author Google revers as inspiring innovation in technology and design.

This little game was fun, but I was holding on to the hope this was something big, such as a new product which would blow our minds or a revelation that Google had been contacted by aliens who wanted to communicate with us. But it wasn’t. It was merely a celebration of a dead author. I suppose I’d better read War Of The Worlds again as a tribute.

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