Google posts the best doodle in the world

Early this afternoon, I trucked over to the Google search page, saw the doodle above and wondered: "Who's birthday is it? Who is Google celebrating today?" Doodles are fairly common commemorating special days. It's my birthday. What a funny coincidence it seemed, but wasn't. The Google doodle is for me.

Have you seen a personalized doodle like this before for you? It's new to me, and I'm thinking it all has to do with Google+ and new user profiles associated with it. I've been logged into Google on other birthdays but never noticed the doodle in the past.

If I log out of Google, the birthday doodle disappears. I confirmed with several other folks that they see the typical Google logo. Then when I dragged the doodle to my desktop as artwork for this post the file name reads "Happy Birthday Joe!" Well, thank you, Google.

I hate birthday fusses, which is why the day is usually kept secret. You won't find it on my Facebook profile. But it is in my Google profile. Somehow I missed that. I questioned whether writing this post, for the same reason -- not wanting to draw attention to my birthday. But I couldn't resist. This kind of personalization, from Google search page, is simply too hot a topic to pass up.

On June 29, I asked: "Is Google+ social done right?" Google's emerging social network ties directly to the search page. It puts relationships where many people go most often on the web -- the search page. Those relationships are in some ways the most meaningful personalization ever applied to a search portal.

It's also part of Google's broader effort to personalize the search experience. According to a help doc:

You can get customized results whenever you use Google. Depending upon whether or not you're signed in to a Google Account when you search, the information we use for customizing your experience will be different:

Signed-in personalization: When you're signed in, Google personalizes your search experience based on your Web History. If you don't want to receive personalized results while you're signed in, you can turn off Web History and remove it from your Google Account. You can also view and remove individual items from your Web History.

Signed-out customization: When you're not signed in, Google customizes your search experience based on past search information linked to your browser, using a cookie. Google stores up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser's cookie, including queries and results you click.

The idea is to make search more relevant to you. But there is the darker side, too, as people rightly wonder about privacy and what Google knows about them or could reveal. One of my colleagues suggested a different headline for this post: "Google knows it is your birthday". That raises a question: "How?" Why did I chose a different headline? Because the best doodle in the world is the one for you.

You can expect more personalization from Google -- and surely a birthday doodle for you -- particularly this year. Google is undergoing something of a makeover right now, with personalization and relationships as two core ingredients being added everywhere. For a primer on other things happening at the search and information giant, please read my January analysis "2011: The year of Google".