The winner of the Doodle 4 Google competition submitted her doodle months ago in the hopes of one day seeing it on the homepage of the search engine. On Monday, that hope became a reality when her dinosaur illustration was announced as the winning doodle of the competition.
First-grade student Sarah Gomez-Lane's doodle was chosen as the winner out of thousands of submissions. Her drawing featured dinosaurs as part of the theme for this year: "What inspires me?" She chose to include dinosaurs because she hopes to one day be a paleontologist.
"The things on my doodle are my favorite dinosaurs. Dinosaurs inspire me to study more to be a paleontologist. The shovel is for my future job!" Sarah said with her doodle submission.
Sarah's doodle, which incorporates the Google logo along with her favorite dinosaurs, will be turned into an interactive doodle thanks to some of Google's professional doodlers and will be displayed on the homepage of the site for one day before the end of the year, according to Google.
More than 180,000 submissions were made to the competition. A panel of judges then voted for their favorites. After that, the public got to choose the top five. One doodle was selected from each age group, which ranges from kindergarten to third grade, fourth and fifth grades, sixth and seventh grades, eighth and ninth grades and then grades 10 through 12.
The five finalists were announced in early June.
Big congrats to our #Doodle4Google National Finalists! Check out their inspiring artwork right here → https://t.co/2Kt2rzrcXf pic.twitter.com/CHn6w6MVyY
— Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) June 4, 2018
The other finalists in the competition submitted doodles that featured a map of the United States, art, family, a rollercoaster and a clothing design studio.
The four finalists who didn't win were each awarded $5,000 in scholarship money for college, some Google hardware and swag, and a chance to go to the Google headquarters in California.
Sarah won $30,000 in college scholarship money, along with $50,000 for her school or the nonprofit of her choice. She also won the Google hardware and the trip to headquarters.
Google chose Sarah's doodle because the company liked her interpretation of the theme, said a release. The judges also admired her big dreams and aspirations at such a young age and hoped that her design could help encourage other young kids to get involved in STEM fields or in art in the future.
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