Those Google "doodles" that sometimes adorn the search giant's homepage with clever variations on the company logo might be cute, but take a closer look. Critics charge that it's possible to see in the sketches Google's disdain for (take your pick) America, Muslims, Christians, Christmas, and creationism.

Take this week's unveiling of the darwinius masillae fossil called Ida. Our own science editor, John Timmer, calls the fossil's big reveal a tremendous bit of hype not fully justified by the science, but some press accounts have talked Ida up as a key missing link in human evolution.

So when Google turned Ida into a doodle, it was only a matter of hours before backers of creationism charged the Big G with "going ape over the supposed discovery of a 'missing link' in the evolution theory."

And posters on message boards like Rapture Ready went much further. "I am really tired of this stupid AC [antichrist?] world... MY FATHER IS YHWH [Yahweh]... MY GOD AND MY SAVIOUR YESHUA [Jesus] and THE KADOSH RUACH [the Holy Spirit]....they [Google, not the Trinity] worship satan... Sick stuff."

Another poster said that "I almost threw my laptop it made me soooooooooo mad! Made me wonder what the logo would look like after we're taken outta here!"

But the Satan worshippers over at Mountain View don't just irritate creationists waiting to be raptured. No, it turns out the doodles have a long history of angering people.

Back in 2006, the National Review noted, "They [Google] change their homepage logo for all sorts of holidays and occasions. Just last week they paid tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday. But Memorial Day doesn't seem to rate anything at all."

A totalitarian-loving doodle?

When Google doodled the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik satellite launch in 2007, the LA Times covered the Sputnik-sized controversy that followed. "Not only did Google honor an achievement by a totalitarian regime that was our Cold War enemy, [critics] griped, but it did so without having ever altered its logo to commemorate US military personnel on Memorial Day or Veterans Day."

If it's not quite clear that Google doesn't love America enough, a later quote from WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah made it plain. "When they ignore Veterans Day and Memorial Day, I think they're telling us something about the way they view America," he told the paper.

And in 2008, "America's most controversial radio talk show host" took Google to task for "hating Christmas."

"There’s one holiday they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge—Christmas," wrote James Edwards. "Go through all [the past logos] and you’ll see that Google has never once acknowledged Christmas, even though it’s by far the most popular and important holiday to the people who made Google the overwhelmingly dominant search engine it is today."

It's not just Christians who have had problems with the doodles. A Pakistani blogger complained last year that "Google never celebrated Happy Ramadan to the Muslim community around the world. ... If Christmas, St. Patrick’s day, St. George day and other days are so much important then I think Google should also celebrate Happy Ramadan or Eids, etc. ... But Google never ever made a dedicated logo."

No offense

The company has made it clear in the past that it chooses not to make doodles for religious holidays. That's why the "Christmas" doodles that the Pakistani blogger noted really aren't about "Christmas"; they feature snowmen and icicles and "season's greetings" messages.

A desire not to offend also appears to be behind the lack of "patriotic" doodles like those for Memorial Day and Veterans Day—though Google did start doing Veterans Day doodles in 2007.

For a multinational, it's always worth keeping in mind that martial holidays in victorious countries always mean that soldiers in some other state where you do business suffered and died—though that hasn't stopped the company from doodling about Independence Day in the US.

Looking back though the doodles, we're most impressed not with how controversial they are but with how far they've come (see two designs on the right). Early drawings from 1999 look like something quite possibly thrown together by Larry or Sergey during a coffee break; 2009's images, by contrast, are real works of art.

They are also surprisingly eclectic. What other company would celebrate Ren? Magritte's birthday, Dr. Seuss, and the Large Hadron Collider? If these are Satanists, they're Satanists with exquisite taste.