Google barcode: or google as a barcode. From Google.com
Today's doodle from Google is in honor of the barcode. That humble strip of information which has so revolutionised logistics and the retail world.
What Google have done with the barcode is to make a barcode which says Google. Then they've used it as their doodle for the day, in honor of this being the 57th anniversary of the granting of the patent for said barcode itself.
Bar code Google. From Google.pt
As you can see from the barcode above and the barcode to the right Google are using the same barcode doodle in different localities. The first barcode comes from Google.com, the second from Google.pt, the Portuguese front page. This neatly illustrates the point that as long as the alphabets are the same then the barcodes will be the same in different languages. The third Google barcode, at the bottom, is from Google.cn, the Chinese front page, and as you can see it isn't in fact a barcode. For if the alphabet is different (or if we're using pictograms rather than an alphabet) then the trick doesn't work.
Not barcode Google. From Google.cn
It's difficult to describe how much the humble barcode has changed things: there are serious business analysts who would say that it was Sam Walton's mastery of the implications of the technology which led to WalMart's success. What it has really done is improve the efficiency of the entire distribution chain: something which is pretty good for something designed originally to be used on railroad cars.
The barcode has meant that every retailer, every wholesaler to them, even every manufacturer, can now see how much material there is in the supply chain, what's selling and where. If you believe in the idea that (some) recessions are caused by an excessive build up in stock levels (and that's certainly something which is pointed to about some of them, if not the current one) then the barcode can even be used as an explanation of why recessions are shallower and shorter these days than they used to be.
Finally, just for giggles, what happens when you put the Google barcode back through a barcode reader? The result is here. Yes, the bar code really does say "Google".
Comments
Cool!
aha, ok, I'm Kenny Rogers and, yea yea, but why the lines? Why 2 days, the lines started yesterday, today today, there are lines!!! lines!!!!. je,jm. I love wiskey.
I wish I knew what the lines stand for???
sweet. more google neames i can't read lol.
How cool! It made me do my research... Happy 57th Anniversary Bar Code! I love Google : )
With all of the distrust in our world today....especially about barcodes....not a good idea to post a barcode on "email" access, IMHO.
Google is celebrating the wrong event, or at least attributing the bar code's utilitarian omnipresence to the wrong event. Today's ubiquitous use of the bar code derives not from the patent but from the ground-breaking work of a small committee of a national trade association in the early 1970's that took on the then-novel idea of using a scannable bar code to identify every product sold in grocery stores. The committee started from scratch, and its work became the model for all that followed. The committee solved many practical and technical problems, set performance standards, and cordinated the project successfully with product manufacturers, equipmment suppliers, and end users. Without the effort of this committee, the bar code patent might well be only be a piece of paper gathering dust in the Patent Office Archives. The only place the committe MAY have shown a lack of marketing acumen was in the name chosen for the product--UGPIC-Uniform Grocery Product Identification Code.
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