New Year's Google Doodle Rings in 2012

Google is kicking off the New Year with a homepage doodle featuring party-going, animated letters.

Each letter of the company's logo is sporting tiny hands and feet, as well as party hats and formal wear, ringing in the New Year with streamers, balloons, and the obligatory 2012 glasses.

A link below the search box urges users to "watch and remember" 2011 via the Google Zeitgeist video. The annual list recaps the year in Google all over the world; this year, Internet star Rebecca Black, Google+, and Apple products on the company's fastest-rising searches list.

The doodle started showing up on international Google Web sites on Friday afternoon as it became New Year's Eve in different time zones.

Update: Google for New Year's Day with letters that appear to be hard at work on their resolutions.

Google has been celebrating New Year's Eve via doodles since 2000, when it added a party hat to the second "o" and affixed a simple "Happy New Year!" greeting below the logo. Animals have been featured heavily over the years, from the penguins in 2004 and woodland creatures in 2002 to the jungle animals in 2009 and a beaver in 2006. In 2008, the New Year's Google doodle also celebrated 25 years of TCP/IP. See the slideshow for more.

2011 has been quite the year; recently, PCMag looked back at what it brought for major tech companies like , , , , , and .

We also counted down the and looked at Web traffic to determine and .

Not surprisingly, Steve Jobs's death topped , while the demise of RIM and HP and the rise of Google+ also made the list.

For more, check out our , the , and PCMag's .

For more on Google's doodles, meanwhile, see the below and check out the . That list includes the , which eventually got its own standalone site. The company has also honored Gumby creator Art Clokey, Muppets creator Jim Henson, Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce, among others.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that for its popular homepage doodles, covering "systems and methods for enticing users to access a Web site."