Why is there a bar code on the Google search page?

Click on the bar code picture on google and it will tell you why. :) It does look a bit weird cos your used to seeing google there.

i was thinking my computer was acting funny again +2

When ever you see that the logo of Google changes all you have to do is to keep your mouse cursor on it and it will tell you the story behind it. This time it's because of the invention of bar code.

In recognition of the birthday of the invention of barcodes

I think it's some type of barcode day.

Today is the anniversary of the first patent on barcodes. :)

1) "The first Google Doodle was to the Burning Man Festival of 1998. The doodle was designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. Subsequent Google Doodles were designed by an outside contractor, until Larry and Sergey asked then-intern Dennis Hwang to design a logo for Bastille Day in 2000. Hwang has been designing the Google Doodles ever since.

Clicking on a Google Doodle links to a string of Google search results about the topic, which can drive a lot of traffic to unsuspecting sites."

"On 2009 October 7th, Google featured a doodle of their logo as a barcode to recognize it's the anniversary of its invention in 1948 by Bernard Silver."
Source and further information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Doodle#Google_Doodle

Further information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode


2) "Google's new logo is a barcode which, as far as we can tell, says "Google." "

"The barcode on the Google homepage is Code 128 encoded, which is a standard way of encoding ASCII character strings (ie. A-Z, a-z, 0-9, etc.) into a barcode."
Source and further information:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/07/AR2009100700130.html