Google's mystery UFO doodle finally explained

I know there are some people who have not slept for fear that Google had finally committed itself to some alien culture.

Well, some outerworldly alien culture. Well, some outerworldly alien culture where all beings were green and no one used phrases like "market segmentation" and "41 shades of blue."

You see, a mysterious doodle appeared on the Google home page. It showed an alien spacecraft making off with the second "O" in the word "Google."

Were we really expected to merely gogle now? Didn't that sound uncomfortably close to ogling?

Though there were no references to the Church of Scientology, Google's first pronouncement on the subject did not quell the concern.

The questionably benign company declared: "We consider the second 'o' critical to user recognition of our brand and pronunciation of our name. We are actively looking into the mysterious tweet that has appeared on the Google twitter stream and the disappearance of the 'o' on the Google home page. We hope to have an update in the coming weeks."

The world continued experiencing the occasional shudder, until Google's Twitter page produced this revelatory tweet on Friday: "1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19."

Well, it was revelatory to those who think in a certain way, one to which I can only aspire.

"Yes, of course," those who think that way said to themselves, while simultaneously slapping their heads with a fly-swatter. "It's a reference to that wonderful Japanese video game of the 1980s, Zero Wing."

Now, look, I've heard of Vera Wang. But somehow Zero Wing passed me by, though I think it would be an excellent name for a fashion designer.

However, those on the inside (of the spacecraft) tell me that Zero Wing is terribly cool and features extremely characteristic English translations.

Apparently, Cats, a villain even greater than the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, makes this declaration at the beginning of Zero Wing: "How are you gentlemen. All your base are belong to us."

Well, when you take all those numbers in the Google tweet and turn them into the corresponding letters of the alphabet, you get: "All your O are belong to us."

Why would some Googlies want to feature Zero Wing now? Well, it's the game's 20th anniversary.

So there. The problem is solved. The world is safe. Google has not been taken over by aliens.

Or can we really be sure of that?

[ehfla]

Or perhaps it is another Japanese reference....their First Lady who claims to have been abducted by aliens.

[Rod Roddy]

Oh Google, you wacky bunch of nerds :)

[rmva]

OK. Now can someone explain the one that looked like a stick of dynamite connected to some det cord.

[Kalemanzi]

guyfox

[rapier1]

Guyfox? Do you mean Guy Fawkes day?

[Electro_Fox]

Google-Communist-Revolutionaries, for fuxckx sake man... (Anything you search for can be used against you in a court of law... Part of the Google Miranda of Rights, heh...)

[terminalblue]

that doesnt make any sense.

there were no traditional UFO's in zero wing.

[Electro_Fox]

True that...

[kaibelf]

That's because if they used an official Zero Wing spacecraft the morons who worry about such details would be even more confused.

[dowell100]

Matyszczyk's selection of topics = yawn.

[EvanSei]

interesting, usually I can pretty well guess what google is getting at with the Logo changes but I just didn't understand this one.

This is either very subtle schmoozing of the Japanese market, a great example of geeks with too much spare time on their hands or just pretentious. Could bee all three. I can't decide.

[ZetaZeta_]

I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with Japan and everything to do with the massive American-originating internet meme which exploded after the main theme remix "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" which is deeply rooted in geek culture (and geeks sort of make up a lot of Google).

Someone set us up the bomb.

[gwatson47]

Who knew the age a website can go senile is about 10 years. Watch out Amazon your next.

[Keith_Richard_Radford_Jr]

Anyone who says they can not believe in extraterrestrial life can not believe in the mere possibility of a living god. Amazon is a distribution giant.

[wolfeater92]

This has been proved wrong. The info saying that it was released on September 5th was added after the logo was posted. Back to square one.

[gmcbay]

I don't know or care anything about this Google logo business, but you've seriously never heard of Zero Wing? Really?

How could you be on the Internet and not be aware of the epic "All your base are belong to us" meme?

Are you my mom, writing under a pseudonym?

[broseph85]

aw, that's awesome! hi mom!!!

[easilytom]

Dude, do you think it could be?

[Zoboflobby]

Ok how can someone who writes a tech blog not know about this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qItugh-fFgg

[solitare_pax]

It's a classic - I've been pointing it out to internet newbies for years now.

"Somebody set us up the bomb!" :D

[t8]

UFO's exist. Any craft that is not indentified is unidentified.

[atomD21]

And from the deep space planet of Zeeplokxs! I know, I went there with the Japanese PM's wife! She's a delightful woman.

[nemrel]

Wait a second.....some guy who works for Cnet News has never heard of Zero Wing and All Your Base? Where have you been for the last 10 years? So sad. What's the next article going to be about? Windows 95's amazing leap to some weird looking START button on the Toolbar?

[TechnoMan475392]

Actually, the next article is going to be a full-on history story about the start button, with extra chapters about the bar itself.

[dwimsey]

Zero Wing has nothing to do with the logo, otherwise when you click the logo it would have taken you to a search that resulted in results relating to Zero Wing, which it didn't. The search query was 'unexplained phenomenon' and none of the results had anything to do with Zero Wing.

Way to grab some ad impressions, but at least do some research rather than listening to some random anecdotal reference from some guy who knows this guy who heard from a video game. There are no UFOs or aliens in Zero Wing.

[upuaut]

In 1997, the CEO handed me a floppy disk and said "put the internet on this please. I wanna check what it's all about"

[TechnoMan475392]

Back in the early 90s, my mom worked for netscape and helped them get off the ground.

[4dthinker]

Shouldn't it have been "Half your O are belong to us."

[fernin8r]

I decoded the following: "all youm oame belong tm us" The 15th letter of the alphabet is "m"

[PSmith]

What's with the nitwit who can't count? "M" is the 13th letter of the alphabet, not the 15th.

[easilytom]

In all honesty I think the real issue is that a gigantic company such as Google didn't have the sense to keep a spare 'o' just in case something like this ever happened.

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Zero Wing? Really? Okay, as a video game history follower (I can't myself a historian, even though I own 40 years worth of magazines in electronic/video/computer game entertainment), Zero Wing was and still is a nothing that only five people make fun of because of an old article by classicgaming.com, who is owned by GameSpy.

Zero Wing is a Genesis game that, upon release, wasn't even reviewed by EGM, GamePro, Game Players, Sega Visions, and Video Games & Computer Entertainment. The only mentions of the game are in the marketplace ads for those shady, before-the-Internet mail-order game "stores" that mostly dealt in used games.

(GameStop was started as one of the these frauds, known as FuncoLand, which then expanded from mail-order to the actual retail, changed their name to GameStop after being bought by Barnes & Nobles, and then bought Electronics Boutique ~for those wondering what EB Games stood for.)

So why is Google even bothering making fun of Zero Wing? I'm sick of it and being dictated to by the Big Seven Media that owns everything and approves of this crap.

[ddesy]

If you're a "video game history follower," you should know that Zero Wing is not just a Genesis game. Actually, it was never released for the Genesis but rather the non-US Mega Drive. It was also an arcade game and PC Engine CD-ROM game. Only the Mega Drive version had that poorly translated intro.

[AA4PC]

And I thought they did that because it was my birthday and I'm a big fan of The X-Files and Fringe... Damn!

[SeizeCTRL]

Wasn't there also a big UFO convention this weekend? I think I saw something about it on CNN with a bunch of cosplay people dressed up as stormtroopers and master chief and so on.

[Lennron]

wow. talk about a slow news day.