Baidu and Google Celebrate Chinese New Year

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January 23 was Chinese New Year, and heralds the Lunar New Year of the Water Dragon, a once in every 60 years occurrence. The dragon is perceived as a mystical and auspicious creature in Chinese cultures and this year is expected to bring prosperity and transformational change.

Baidu, China's top search engine, has created a logo on its homepage to celebrate the year of the dragon.

Once you mouse over the dragon image, it becomes animated and dances around the page.

If you click on the dragon image, it leads users to play a word game competing against one another by the geographic region of their hometown across China. Participants are asked to submit answers via mobile to enter the chance to win a prize.

Another Chinese search engine, Sogou.com, has created an animated video depicting the Lunar New Year celebrations with the firecracker going off.

A red packet will appear with an auspicious greeting that can be shared to friends on the local microblogs and social network.

Microsoft's Bing China features a number of background images on its homepage. One of them is the dragon, which the site described as the mystical dragon sends good fortune to all.

To celebrate Chinese New Year, Yahoo created an animated clip of a rabbit (representing the previous year) hopping off as the dragon takes over.

Last but not least, below is Google's Doodle for the dragon year. In Asia, the Doodle is featured on Google sites in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Korea.

(You can see Google's Year of the Rabbit Doodle for last year's Chinese New Year here.)

Here's wishing all readers Kung Hei Fat Choi, which means "may prosperity be with you."

Thisarticle was originally published Jan. 23, 2012 on SearchEngineWatch.com.