Just when Google users thought that it has gone meeting aliens when it changed its logo into a Google UFO doodle, the mystery is now solved. The mysterious and controversial logo showed a UFO sucking up one of Google’s Os with a tractor beam.

Doodles are usually used to visually mark holidays, famous scientists or thinkers, or anniversaries. The logo was reportedly inspired to mark the anniversary of the launch of the Voyager I spacecraft. Enough said? Well, not really.

The plot thickened when Google linked their logo to a search for the term ‘unexplained phenomena.’ Nothing unexplainable about that. Google won’t be number one if it didn’t have oodles of marketing savvy through promotional gimmickry.

To further the interest-generating mystery, Google gave out a clue on its Twitter page by adding the message “1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19?. Swap those numbers for the corresponding letters of the alphabet and you get “All your O are belong to us”. Those who can assimilate all this can breeze through it with a snap of a finger. For the not so tech-savvy, well, go figure.

Here’s a better and more explicit explanation for the consumption of mere mortals: the phrase “All your O are belong to us” is a reference to an old internet meme, ‘a poorly-translated line from a Japanese video game, popped up in all kinds of internet jokes.’

It seems that the line was taken from the game Zero Wing, first released in Japan on September 5, 1989 or 20 years to the day of the mysterious Google doodle appearance on September 5, 2009.

For all we know, Google just wants us to rehash our knowledge of online history. Only a handful could have ever gotten to the bottom of it, anyway. Tough luck for us, but no sweat for Google – the virtual library of the universe.

Via Telegraph.co.uk