It’s as embedded in everyday society as coffee, cornflakes and Coca-Cola.

Except this one you don’t eat or drink…you see it when you log onto the World Wide Web each day. And it’s forever changing too.

The Google Doodle is a digital chameleon, an icon that alters its form to suit whatever occasion it happens to be in the US, UK, Ireland, Senegal, Czech Republic…in fact, any country where Google has a presence.

The many guises of Google’s logo is now part of the internet’s very fabric – people expect to see it change and would probably write strongly-worded letters to the search engine giant if it ever ceased this practice.

And it all started on August 30^th, 1998. Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, designed ‘The Burning Man’, a logo that would be displayed should Google’s servers crash. You’ll also note that the original Google logo had the exclamation mark in it…a nod and a wink to Yahoo!.

The first Google Doodle designed to mark an occasion or commemorative day was for Thanksgiving in November 1998.

In July 2000, Page and Brin got wind that a young Google intern by the name of Dennis Hwang was somewhat of an artist, so they asked him to design some of the festive Google logos. And since then, the world’s most famous unknown artist churns out about 50 logos a year. Though, as Google’s International Webmaster, his quirky logo designs only constitute about a fifth of his responsibilities.

In recent years, the Google Doodles have become more sophisticated, with interactivity thrown into the mix too.

To mark the 30^th anniversary of Pac-Man, Google produced what was probably the first ‘playable logo’ in May 2010 – users could play 255 levels of Pac-Man within the Google Doodle itself. Click the image below, hit ‘insert coin’ and see for yourself.

And in 2011 so far, we’ve already seen some fantastically creative Google Doodles, such as the animated Bunsen logo. In fact, in the first quarter of 2011, there were 57 uniquely designed Google logos across the world.

If you have a bit of spare time, feel free to browse Google’s back-catalogue of Doodles. And if there’s a particular favourite of yours, do post a comment below or drop us a tweet: @blurdesigns.