Google Celebrates The 2012 London Olympics With A Special Doodle

The Olympic Games come by once in four years, and before the battles for the medals commence, it's time for the gala opening ceremony. As the city of London and Danny Boyle's team gears up to match the spectacle put up by Beijing in the previous games,Google has done its bit with a cute doodle on its homepage. Breaking away from the clichéd five-ring symbol, the doodle depicts six games specific to the summer event: football, swimming, sprinting, javelin throwing, fencing, and basketball.

The Indian contingent for the London 2012 games comprises of 81 athletes and 36 coaches. These athletes will be participating in 13 sports in all.

With the 2012 games, London will become the only city to have hosted the games thrice, with the prior versions being in 1908 and 1948. As of this writing, the clock shows less than 10 hours to go before the opening ceremony begins. However, the event has already generated its fair share of controversies, chief being the inclusion of Dow Chemical, current owner of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal that caused the 1984 gas leak, as one of the main sponsors of the competition. That being said, these games have been described as the "first Social Media Olympics", with meticulous guidelines laid down by the IOC(International Olympic Committee) about what should be posted online by the athletes and participants — not to mention the incident in which Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou was sent home because of a "racist" tweet.

All said and done, the opening ceremony will air later tonight at 01:00 IST. Let's hope it's worth staying up that late indoors, especially on a Friday night. You can watch the event live on the internet through this link.