February 17, 2009 by Matt Thomas
Yahoo and Google have received criticism from some of the more patriotic US blogs and elements of the press for neglecting to upload a special logo for president’s day yesterday. The yearly American holiday, which falls near the time of George Washington’s birthday and honours all US presidents, was greeted by the two search engines with absolutely no fanfare.
This marks the second year running in which neither search engine has commemorated the day and comes not long after Google preferred a logo honouring Charles Darwin – a man still less than adored in some parts of the US – to one commemorating Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.
For once, rival search engines Ask and Live Search managed to get one up on the top two search engines, at least in America, by commemorating the day in style, devoting almost their entire homepages to large scale photographs of Mount Rushmore. AOL also commemorated the day with a special logo, even Dog Pile got in on the act.
The reasons behind Yahoo and Google’s decision are a mystery though one theory is that the two companies wanted to promote themselves as international brands and therefore decided to stay away from such pro American grandstanding.
Related posts:
