A smile instantly comes to my face when I think of Lotería. I think of being with my extended family in Mexico for the holidays, scattering around my Tia Cruz’s house, anxiously waiting for a round to start. I think of us trying to distract each other from our boards by tossing beans. Mostly, I think of the laughter and the excitement; I think about how all the worries of the world melted away, even if just for a few hours. 

So when our team was trying to come up with new concepts for interactive Doodles this year, I immediately thought of Lotería. The game itself is so simple and magical, and I wanted to see how it could come to life in the digital space and tap into that sense of connection. And so the Lotería Doodle was born.

Originating in Italy in the 15th century, Lotería first moved to Spain before reaching Mexico in 1769. The rules are similar to Bingo: Players mark spots on a tabla, or board, with a token (traditionally a raw bean) and attempt to fill it before all other players. A designated card announcer randomly pulls colorfully illustrated cards like La Luna or El Arbol. A shout of “¡lotería!” or “¡buenas!” declares victory for one lucky player, ending the round. 

Today’s interactive Doodle celebrates this iconic game on the anniversary of the day it was first copyrighted in Mexico. It’s also our second-ever multiplayer experience in a Doodle: Play the game with friends in a private match, or match with others around the globe at random.

We collaborated with five Mexican and Mexican-American illustrators to reimagine most of the iconic Lotería game art for the Doodle—and even added new cards for a fun sorpresa. Popular Mexican YouTuber Luisito Comunica also serves as the game card announcer for the Doodle.

Today, Lotería’s iconic imagery and the experience it fosters across generations remains a source of pride and celebration for Mexican culture. Whether you play today with your familia or with a new amig@ from the other side of the world, we hope today’s Doodle inspires fun, curiosity and a healthy dose of competencia.

 ¡Feliz Aniversario, Lotería!

Editor’s note: To help families dealing with addiction, Google has given over $1 million worth of contributions to Partnership for Drug-Free Kids (PDFK) this year and worked with PDFK to show up for people who are seeking support. When someone searches for relevant queries such as "teen drug addiction" on Google or YouTube, they get the number to call an experienced parent coach who works with caregivers to develop individualized plans for helping loved ones with substance use. You can also find local and national helplines on our Recover Together site.

I can still vividly remember confronting my mother when I was in my late teens. After a lifetime of dealing with her unreliability, I had just had it. In a blowup conversation, I told her that she had chosen drugs over me. 

At the time, I looked at her years of being incarcerated or held up in halfway homes as abandonment. But I now know that there was no other place she would have rather been than to be home with me—clean and sober. While my mother ultimately died of an opioid overdose, truthfully the drug had been slowly taking her over the years. I’ve come to understand that she only chose drugs once. She started using at 13 years old, and that was the one and only time it was her decision. After that, the drugs had her and never let go.

Today’s global Google Doodle honors the late Dr. Herbert D. Kleber, who followed a calling in his life to study patients with addictions, like my mother. It was a direction he didn’t plan for in his professional career as a psychiatrist. However, his pioneering work on understanding and treating addiction brought the scientific community to the understanding that drug addictions are physiological shortcomings, and not moral ones. I’m grateful for Dr. Kleber’s work, because it has certainly helped me better understand my mother’s plight. 

Like Dr. Kleber, I also followed a calling. I didn’t expect to write a memoir about my relationship with my mother and her drug use. But after meeting so many young readers who also walked a similar path in life to the one I had, I truly felt the need to tell my story. It’s why I was also moved to work on this Google Doodle honoring Dr. Kleber. I hope that both offer people, especially young readers, the opportunity to see their experiences reflected in media that is visible to all.

I hear from my readers often as they recount their own complicated relationships with a parent suffering from opioid addiction disorder. When they ask what it was like to write and draw a book that recounts so many traumatic moments, I let them know that it helped me come to an important conclusion: My mother wasn’t the antagonist in the story of my life. The drugs were.

I’m still not sure if I know what I want to be when I grow up. But by looking at all of the Doodle for Google submissions we have received this year, I’ve learned that kids have a lot more figured out than I do. Around 222,000 students entered this year’s contest and responded to the theme “When I grow up, I hope…”  

Yesterday, one of our guest judges this year, Jimmy Fallon, announced this year’s National Winner, Arantza Peña Popo. She stopped by "The Tonight Show" to chat about her winning Doodle, called “Once you get it, you give back,” which she drew in honor of her mom. “When I grow up, I hope to care for my mom as much as she cared for me my entire life,” she said. “My mom has done so much for me and sacrificed a lot.”

Today, millions of people will be able to see Arantza’s Doodle on the biggest “refrigerator door” around: the Google homepage. Additionally, Arantza will receive $30,000 toward a college scholarship and her school, Arabia Mountain High School (where she was recently named valedictorian), will receive a $50,000 technology package. Thank you to Arantza and all of the students who entered this year for sharing your hopes with us. And maybe one day, we grownups will figure out what we want to do when we grow up. 

Fifty years ago on July 20, 1969, astronauts from NASA’s Apollo 11 mission stepped foot on the moon. Today, you can relive the Apollo 11 journey from blast-off to re-entry in an epic video Doodle narrated by former astronaut and Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins. 

Collins was one of three astronauts on the mission, along with Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. While Armstrong and Aldrin “frolicked” on the moon’s surface (Collins’ words, not ours!), he was the one who stayed behind in the command module, which would eventually bring all three astronauts back home to Earth. In the Doodle, you can hear him describe their “adventure,” beginning when a Saturn V rocket blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on July 16. Four days later, the lunar module, known as “the Eagle,” made its 13-minute journey to the “Sea of Tranquility” on the moon’s surface. And the rest, as they say, was history.

To create today’s Doodle, the team worked closely with NASA to understand the ins and outs of the mission and ensure the most accurate representation possible. In the Doodle, you can learn about the 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo project, the onboard computer, and the "barbecue roll" which was used to regulate the spacecraft’s temperature. Learn more about the process of creating the doodle in our behind-the-scenes video:

You can also see early storyboard sketches and concept art from Doodler Pedro Vergani:

The moon landing radically reshaped the way people thought about our world and what is possible. To this day, it is an inspiration for doers and dreamers around the globe—the very Earth that Collins describes in the Doodle as “the main show.” We hope today’s Doodle is a fitting tribute to this monumental human achievement. To quote Collins:

“We, you and me, the inhabitants of this wonderful Earth. We did it!"