Holi 2018 marked by Google Doodle – how is the search giant marking the Hindu festival of colours?

 a graphic designer and illustrator based in Brooklyn, New York.

It is visible to Google users in India, the UK, the USA and Canada.

What is Holi?

Holi is a festival of colours and is also known as the festival of love, which marks the start of spring every year.

Despite it originally being a Hindu festival, people of all religions and walks of life now take part – and it's now seen as a universal celebration.

The festivities often involve thousands of people throwing paint around and getting covered in different colours.

The date varies, but it's always marked on the full moon - starting with a bonfire with singing and dancing.

This year, Holi began on the evening of Thursday, March 1 and ends on the evening of Friday, March 2.

You can pronounce Happy Holi in Hindi as "Holee mubaarak", with the Hindi words written as ‘होली मुबारक’.

What is a Google Doodle?

In 1998, the search engine founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google as a message to that they were out of office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.

The company decided that they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.

In that same year, a turkey was added to Thanksgiving and two pumpkins appeared as the 'o's for Halloween the following year.

Now, there is a full team of doodlers, illustrators, graphic designers, animators and classically trained artists who help create what you see on those days.

Among the Doodles published in recent months were ones commemorating German scientist Robert Koch, Jan Ingenhousz (who discovered photosynthesis) and the 50th anniversary of kids coding languages being introduced.

Earlier in the year, the search giant celebrated the 2017 Autumn Equinox , which marked the official ending of summer and the coming of autumn.