Google celebrates Saudi Arabia’s 82nd National Day

Internet search giant Google has celebrated the 82nd of the National Day of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by creating a special variation of the Google logo to in shades of green featuring the country’s city skyline, including the capital and Riyadh’s Kingdom Center.

News of the logo variation, which can only be found on Google’s Saudi landing page, spread on social media site, Twitter, with many tweeting about the event. Fahad al-Ghamdi said that he feels that this signifies the importance of his country on the global scale, while Saraj Abdullah said that he was very happy with what Google has done.

Google Doodles concept was born in 1998, when a stick figure was drawn to commemorate the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, U.S. In 2000, another doodle was created to commemorate France’s Bastille Day on July 14th. It was well received among users that Google designers came up with more doodles depending on various holidays.

Once commemorating standard international holidays, Google Doodles now creates localized doodles for every holiday or anniversary in history. Most recently, Google created a birthday doodle for medieval Islamic scholar Abu Rayḥan Moḥammed ibn Aḥmad al-Biruni.

The doodle was featured on all landing pages in the Middle East on Sept. 4. Other notable doodles this year were the Egyptian elections on May 23, and Tunisia National Day on March 24, which featured Tunisia’s flag and one of the “O”’s replaced with the moon and star sign.