Googlified

Google’s running two special logos on the home pages of Google Thailand and Italy, to celebrate the Thai New Year and the birthday of Antonio Meucci, respectively.

The Thai New Year (Songkran) is celebrated every year on 13 April to 15 April.  The most obvious celebration of Songkran is the throwing of water. People roam the streets with containers of water or water guns, or post themselves at the side of roads with a garden hose and drench each other and passersby. [Wikipedia]

António Meúcci was an Italian-born inventor who developed a form of voice communication apparatus in 1857 and he is credited with the invention of the telephone. [Wikipedia]

Ionut said on the Google Blogoscoped forum that “maybe Google wanted to make up for this doodle” - and they probably are. :) On a related note, Google’s GrandCentral service experienced a brief outage today.