Happy New Year 2022: Google sends out wishes with festive doodle

New Delhi, Jan 01: Google came up with a celebratory doodle with tiny lights, giant candy, jacklights and confetti to wish people on New Year 2022. On clicking on the doodle, users are taken to search result page, and on the left side there is a ready-to-pop animated confetti cone that lead to a confetti burst with a sound.

Google comes up with colorful doodles every year with innovative ideas but this year it looks very simple. New Year is the time or day at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count increments by one. Many cultures celebrate the event in different mays.

Good riddance to 2021. Let 2022 bring fresh hope. That was a common sentiment as people around the world began welcoming in the new year.

In many places, New Year's Eve celebrations were muted or canceled for the second straight year due to a surge of coronavirus infections, this time driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.

But so far, at least, the omicron surge hasn't resulted in the same levels of hospitalizations and deaths as previous outbreaks - especially among vaccinated people - offering a glimmer of hope for 2022.

New Zealand had earlier opted for a more low-key approach, replacing its fireworks show in Auckland with a lights display projected onto landmarks including the Sky Tower and Harbor Bridge.

Australia went ahead with its celebrations despite an explosion in virus cases. Thousands of fireworks lit up the sky over Sydney's Harbor Bridge and Opera House at midnight in a spectacular display.

Hours before the celebrations began, Australian health authorities reported a record 32,000 new virus cases, many of them in Sydney.

with PTI inputs