CYBRA Corporation

What a pleasant surprise when I browsed over to "Google" a search term today and I was greeted by a familiar symbol -- a Code 128 bar code in place of the multi-color Google logo.

It is readable. I printed it out and scanned the word "Google" into Notepad using my Honeywell HHP IT3800 Imager.  The symbology is Code 128. The CYBRA Auto-ID Glossary defines Code 128 as "a high density, variable length, full alphanumeric bar code type capable of encoding all 128 ASCII characters. It was designed for complex encoded product identification and is the basis of the UCC-128 marking specification."  Follow this link to learn more about Code 128.

But why did Google swap its logo with a bar code? Well, it turns out that today is the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code. Inventors Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver filed the patent on October 1949, and it was granted, No. 2,612,994 (pdf), on October 7, 1952. The original patent was for a system that would encode data in circles (a bulls eye pattern), so that it could be scanned in any direction, kind of like today's UPS MaxiCode 2D bar code.

Earlier this year, in June, the UPC bar code celebrated its 35th birthday. I wrote about that anniversary here, and I looked at some bar codes of the future here.

Obviously, we're delighted to see bar code technology featured in the same way holidays, birthdays of famous personalities like Ghandi and H.G. Wells, and other worthy dates get logo swaps.

By the way, according to Tech Crunch, Google used their own open source barcode project, ZXing, to generate the barcode.  ZXing (pronounced "zebra crossing") is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library implemented in Java.  Its focus is on using the built-in camera on mobile phones to photograph and decode barcodes on the device, without communicating with a server. 

I used Zxing QR Code Generator to create this 2D bar code. 

Can't read it? Try ZXing Online Decoder.

Need to use bar code or RFID for business purposes? Click here.

So, thanks Google, and happy scanning!

And, thanks to Morty Schiller of Wordrider fame for telling me to scan Google's home page. (What he was Googling at 1:42 a.m. I can only guess).