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:

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My Laptop has an Accelerometer?

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