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Valentine's Day and 5 other great Google doodles

The Valentine's Day Google doodle animation is sure to melt anyone's "Cold, Cold Heart." But is this Valentine's Day doodle the best Google doodle video? Here are five of our past favorites.

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Google
Google wishes its users a happy Valentine's Day with a cartoon doodle. The Google Doodle team reinvents the Google logo several times a month through drawings and animations for holidays and commemorative occasions.
  • By Megan Riesz

Google celebrated Valentine's Day on Tuesday with one of its classic, patented doodles. (We're not kidding – Google actually patented the idea of a doodle.)

Featuring Tony Bennett's "Cold, Cold Heart" and a young boy desperately trying to impress his crush, Google latest doodle will leave even the most cynical, anti-Valentine's Day individual a little happier. In it, a boy gives numerous presents to a girl who's jumping rope. He brainstorms ideas for the perfect present by, of course, searching Google. Eventually, he realizes that all she wanted was someone to jump rope with her. Just goes to show, you can't win over someone with a quick Google search.

How does this video stack up against Google previous efforts? Here are five of the best doodle videos. Let us know in the comments which is your favorite.

1. For Charlie Chaplin's 122nd birthday, the team at Google filmed a tribute to Chaplin – starring themselves. A Chaplin lookalike gets himself into all sorts of trouble, knocking over Google letters and attempting to get a free muffin by dancing and juggling baseballs. He eventually gets the muffin, of course, just as the real Chaplin would have.

2. In homage to John Lennon on his 70th birthday, this Google doodle features black and white drawings of trees, butterflies, and flowers, set to the tune of Lennon's "Imagine." It's simple, whimsical, and a perfect tribute to one of the most famous rock icons of all time – especially at the end, when the double-O in Google is replaced by a portrait of Lennon himself.

3. Perhaps one of Google's most visually stunning doodles, this dedication to Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday is nearly as spectacular as Mercury was – well, almost. Opening with "Don't Stop Me Now," one of Queen's greatest hits, the cartoon shows an audience screaming in adoration for Mercury, then turns into a play-by-play of the lyrics. (By the end, he actually rides a tiger and in a spaceship.)

4. On Halloween of last year, Google took photos and video of the Doodle team carving six enormous pumpkins into the letters G, O, O, G, L, and E. Get it? The sheer size of these pumpkins is amazing to behold, but so is the work the artists put in as the sun travels from east to west. (The addition of a Santa Claus and a woman in a leopard jumpsuit makes for a good laugh, too.)

5. This one is a bit of a cheat. This isn't a Google doodle – rather, it's someone explaining how the company makes its doodles. Graphic artist Dennis Hwang uses a tablet to draw three mice on the Google logo. It's impressive but also jealousy inducing (the process and the tablet are, to put it lightly, awesome). Hwang notes that US students are invited to enter the annual Google 4 Doodle competition by reinventing the logo themselves.

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