This weekend, Google celebrated the 119th anniversary of the creation of the Sundae, that yummy soda fountain confection of ice cream, fudge, nuts and whipped cream with a cherry on top.
The rumor mill for Google is getting as contagious as the Cupertino variant. But with how often a new flavor of Android comes out, and considering that Android 2.4 was always rumored to be called “Ice Cream,” is Android (Sundae) that much of a stretch?
Rolling over in my bed--and then rolling over the logo--I discovered that Google was celebrating the 119th anniversary of the first documented ice cream sundae.
Search Engine Watch, for example, is sniffing that "Sunday's sundae is Google's way of whetting the world's appetite for the latest Android update, nicknamed Ice Cream."
Might it, for example, be the work of worried Google staffers, encouraging new CEO Larry Page to eat a little more as he attempts to drive Google beyond its current, slightly static state?
Even though all that proves is that the term was invented at some point not too long before the ad was printed, Google has chosen to respect local lore that holds that the term was invented April 3, 1892, by Chester Platt and John Scott at a pharmacy/soda fountain owned by Platt, in Ithaca.
I’m much more interested in actual ice cream sundaes than the term — as Shakespeare might have written if he’d ever had one: That which we call an ice cream sundae by any other name would taste as sweet. Well, there is plenty of evidence that Thomas Jefferson enjoyed ice cream, both at home in Monticello and in the White House. Some people seem to think Google’s primary motivation in running Sunday’s sundae doodle is that the upcoming update to the Android OS is nicknamed “ice cream.”
