How Google Doodles became one of the best ways to showcase the science and tech heroes you’ve never heard of

People use the search engine trillions of times per day. When they stumble on figures like Ignacio Anaya García, for example, it gives news organisations a chance to demystify their legacies

What do a high school student, the inventor of nachos and Britain’s first female surgeon have in common? They all spent this week having an unexpected and spectacular leap in their fame.

All three of those people – Arantza Peña Popo, Ignacio Anaya García and Louisa Aldrich-Blake, respectively – featured on Google Doodles, immediately letting them be seen by millions of people. And that in turn meant their stories were told, dozens of times across some of the biggest news organisations in the world.

People search Google trillions of times per day. And when they do, they go to a Google page that is lit up with a drawing depicting someone related to that day – and clicking on that drawing usually takes people through to a search for their name.

That allows news organisations to do the work of explaining to all those confused Google-searchers who exactly the person they’re all looking at is, and why they’re seeing them. To make sure they can, websites including The Independent will often write about those drawings, explaining how they came about, who they depict, why today is the day they were chosen and what is important about their stories.

Often those stories are unknown, and Google must be commended for the niche but usually important tales that it finds in history to bring to its homepage. Because so many people head to that page, a highlighted story can instantly go from hardly anyone knowing it to millions doing so in the click of a button.

Yours

Andrew Griffin

Technology editor and science reporter