Google celebrates its 15th birthday with an interactive doodle

Google is celebrating its 15th birthday on Friday with a doodle game and an update to the search engine formula .

On its 15th birthday, it offers a sweet treat with an interactive Mexican pinata doodle. When the swinging star-shaped pinata is whacked with a stick, virtual candies are released and points can be earned.

The tech giant also quietly retooled the closely guarded formula running its Internet search engine to give better answers to the increasingly complex questions posed by Web surfers, on its birthday .

The overhaul came as part of an update called "Hummingbird" that Google Inc. has gradually rolled out in the past month without disclosing the modifications.



Google celebrates its birthday on Sept. 27 each year, even though the company was incorporated a few weeks earlier. The company is now based in Mountain View, California, at a sprawling complex located about seven miles from the 1,900-square-foot home where Page and Brin paid $1,700 per month to rent the garage and a bedroom. The co-founders' landlord was Susan Wojcicki, who is now a top Google executive and Brin's sister-in-law.

Wojcicki sold the home to Google in 2006 and it is now maintained as a monument to the company's humble beginnings.

Besides Hummingbird, Google also announced a few other updates to existing search features aimed at providing information more concisely so people won't need to navigate to another website. These changes are part of Google's effort to adapt to the smaller screens of smartphones that aren't well suited for hopscotching across the Internet.

With agency inputs