This is seriously distracting and I really wonder how many users are going to be completely dumbfounded by the circles floating around where the logo used to be.
An event-based illustrated logo is a simple switch-out. There's not much resistance to understanding the meaning there. The Pac-Man game logo was a bit more complete, but Pac-Man is universally recognized. This on the other hand - how may people will see the logo when they move their cursor away and understand that something on the page isn't broken - that it's intentional?
It will be interesting to see the larger reaction from everyday Google users.
The Pac-Man doodle triggered hundreds of support calls and problem tickets for the makers of browsers and antivirus software. A big part of that, though, was the fact that it played sound (even when the Google search page was loaded on a background tab).
An event-based illustrated logo is a simple switch-out. There's not much resistance to understanding the meaning there. The Pac-Man game logo was a bit more complete, but Pac-Man is universally recognized. This on the other hand - how may people will see the logo when they move their cursor away and understand that something on the page isn't broken - that it's intentional?
It will be interesting to see the larger reaction from everyday Google users.