Death Of Queen Elizabeth II – Google Dons Black

Tom Jowitt,
Linkedin

Search engine landing page stripped of colour, as Google pays simple tribute following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday

Alphabet’s Google has marked the death of the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II, with a simple tribute from the world’s largest search engine.

The search engine giant regularly adjusts its homepage logo to reflect historical events and characters, or to honour certain days or particular events.

After Queen Elizabeth’s death was confirmed on the evening of Thursday 8 September 2022, Google adjusted to its home page to display a simple faded grey logo.

Google Search – Death Of Queen Elizabeth II

RIP Ma’am

People visiting Google homepage and hovering their mouse over the logo or the black ribbon below the search bar, will see the words ‘Queen Elizabeth II 1926 – 2022’.

YouTube’s logo is also adorned with a black ribbon.

Queen Elizabeth was 96 years old and was the UK’s long-serving monarch.

She became queen in 1952 following the death of her father, and reigned for an impressive 70 years as the head of state for the UK and other nations around the world.

For those Brits under the age of 70, she has been the only monarch the country has ever known, and her death marks an end of an era.

Indeed, such was the global reach of the Queen, that US President Joe Biden issued a proclamation hours after her death – ordering all flags at US federal and military facilities to fly at half mast as “as a mark of respect.

US flags will remain at half-mast until sunset on the day of her interment – following a 10-day mourning period in the UK.

Tech savvy queen?

It should be remembered that the Queen was the UK’s head of state during a time of intense technology innovation and change.

Indeed, it could be argued that Queen Elizabeth turned the British monarchy into a more public-facing outfit, and she often used technology to do so.

For example, in 1940 she made her first radio broadcast, offering comfort to children being evacuated from London during the Blitz.

One year after she became Queen, her coronation in 1953 was the first of its kind to be televised to a global audience.

She followed the development of the Concorde with great interest, and she was an early adopter of the internet, although she reportedly didn’t write her own emails but rather dictated them.

Indeed the Queen became one of the first heads of state to use email back in 1976, after she attended the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment to view the first introduction of the ARPANET network to the UK.

In 2010 she toured the Canadian headquarters of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion and was presented with a BlackBerry Bold 9700, personalised with an image of school children offering her flowers.

The Queen was said to have been a long-standing fan of the BlackBerry, ever since the Duke of York (Prince Andrew) had first introduced her to the handsets back in 2007.

The Queen’s senior staff also reportedly used BlackBerry handsets for a number of years, to aid members of the Royal Family and their staff to keep in constant touch with their offices while out and about on official engagements.

Her official Monarchy website first arrived in 2009, and was then relaunched in 2012 by Tim Berners-Lee, often described as the father of the internet.

The Queen was also known to have owned an iPod and was reportedly a big fan of tablet computers, having been introduced to them by her grandsons William and Harry.

On October 24, 2014 she sent her first tweet and in 2019 followed that up by joining Instagram.

Her death marks the end of an era.

RIP Queen Elizabeth II, and thank you for your decades of service.