Most of you know that today, April 22, is officially Earth Day 2010. For those of you who don’t, check out Google, they’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of the annual Earth Day with a new Earth Day doodle, according to the Daily Telegraph.

The search engine’s logo has been transformed into an illustration of a forest. Clicking on the link takes the user to the search results page for Earth Day. Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 after being founded by US Democratic senator Gaylord Nelson.

This year, Earth Day 2010 will coincide with the World People’s Conference on Climate Change, to be held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and with the International Year of Biodiversity.

Earth Day has grown since 1970 to become an annual event, celebrated each year on April 22. Earth Day 2007 was reported as one of the largest to date with an estimated billion people participating in organised Earth Day activities across the globe.

The doodle is the latest of Google’s attempts to commemorate people or events on its home page. Previous Google doodles have commemorated HG Wells, the Large Hadron Collider, Salvador Dali and, most recently, Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa.

Google recently launched a ‘Doodle 4 Google’ competition, which invited US children to ‘exercise their creative imaginations’ on the theme ‘If I Could Do Anything, I Would …’. The winning Google doodle will be displayed on the Google homepage on May 27.

The first Google doodle was of the Burning Man Festival of 1998. The doodle was designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed.

Google doodles have been produced for the birthdays of several noted artists and scientists, including Andy Warhol, Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci. Google Doodles are also used to celebrate historical events. A brick design was used to commemorate Lego’s 50th anniversary.

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