Google discreetly celebrates Pride month
Internet users searching Google this month may notice an addition to their usual search screen. Instead of a plain blue ‘dividing bar’ along the top of the search page, certain searches will bring up a rainbow bar graphic.
This discreet rainbow bar, Google explains, is a way of celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans Pride month, as proclaimed by US President Barack Obama earlier this month.
Instead of being a universal Google graphic, the rainbow bar only appears when the user searches specific terms such as ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ and ‘transgender’.
A Google spokesman told PinkNews.co.uk: “During the month of June, Google is celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Pride. For some Pride-related search queries, we are showing a rainbow divider that separates the search query on the top of the page from the organic search results and AdWords advertisements below.”
“We enjoy celebrating holidays and special events at Google,” he continued. “As you may imagine, it’s difficult for us to choose which events to celebrate on our site, and [we] have a long list of those we’d like to celebrate in the future.”
“We have to balance this rotating calendar with the need to maintain the consistency of the Google search results page. Some holidays and events that we haven’t celebrated in the past may be rotated into divider designs for future years,” he added.
Across internet forums, users have tried to find which searches bring up the graphic, with one user on webmasterworld.com reporting that they had even tried searching Broadway musicals.
