The barcode on the Google homepage is Code 128 encoded, which is a standard way of encoding ASCII character strings (ie. A-Z, a-z, 0-9, etc.) into a barcode. It would be safe to assume that Google used their own open source barcode project, ZXing, to generate the barcode. The same library is used in Android for barcode recognition.

Google regularly changes its logo for holidays and other special events. Here's their 10th birthday logo from last year, for example. More recently they celebrated Gandhi's birthday. Google hosts some of their holiday logos here, and fan created logos here.

We had to double check that the barcode in this instance was correct (some of the geeks here insist the barcode isn't 100% correct), since Google have previously messed things up a little when they try and talk geek dirty. 

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Today if you visit www.google.com you will be able to see the logo of Google was changed to bar code. Google was really celebrating the anniversary of the bar code which was patented on 7th of October 1952.

This special date was coincides with the announcement of the combined winners of the Nobel prize for physics, who had contribute in inventing "Charge-coupled devices" to read bar codes. The inventors are Charles Kuan Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith.

The Charge-coupled devices is a silicon based integrated circuit that converts light energy into an electronic charge. With this technology it has bring digital imaging technology to a higher level. Some of the application that we can see today was in digital cameras, CCTV cameras, endoscopy, desktop videoconferencing, fax machines and lots more.


If you notice, Google had been celebrating some of the world historic day specially those that had change our life a lot such as the bar code invention. With the celebration, we are able to learn a lot of important invention and important dates. I expect Google will show us more of it and I can't wait for the next important dates that Google going to highlight.