Google celebrates Earth Day with flower-themed Doodle

London, Apr 22 (ANI): Internet giant Google has replaced its logo with a time-lapse animation of blooming flowers to commemorate Earth Day and raise ecological awareness.

This year's Earth Day is centred around a scheme dubbed "one billion acts of green", which encourages individuals to make simple environmentally conscious pledges, like switching off lightbulbs or reducing car journeys.

The latest in the search engine's so-called doodles sees purple, red and yellow flowers sprout from a series of shrubs laid out to spell Google, the Guardian reported.

Earth Day was first held on 1970 after Gaylord Nelson, a US senator, conceived it as a tool to encourage an environmental agenda after witnessing a huge oil spill off the coast of California a year earlier.

Organisers have asserted that the 1970 event rallied millions across the country as it tapped in to the rise of hippie culture and anti-Vietnam war protest movements.

"Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realised they shared common values," the official Earth Day website says.

Major Earth Day events have been organised in subsequent years, always on 22 April - the same date as the original event.

In 1990 the event went global for the first time with activities involving nearly 200 million people in 141 countries.

Organisers have claimed that the day is now observed in 192 countries. (ANI)