Les Paul rocks Google with guitar doodle

As if there weren't enough distractions on the internet, today Google are tempting users with a playable guitar on their home page.

Celebrating the 96th birthday of the late guitar legend Les Paul, the "Google doodle" can be strummed like one of his famous Gibson guitars.

Google has previously used its doodle to honour Austrian designer Josef Franz, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and Charlie Chaplin among many others.

Les Paul is responsible for an instrument that has carved his name in the annals of
music - the Gibson Les Paul - the guitar of choice for stars of the rock and pop era.

>The first "playable" Google doodle last year had an operable Pac-Man to celebrate the game's 30th anniversary.

Google courted controversy last year when the Aboriginal flag had to be removed from its Australia Day doodle over a copyright dispute.

Les Paul was born Lester William Polsfuss and became known the world over as a hugely important and innovative guitar maker.

Google marks Les Paul's birthday.

It was his pioneering role in the development of the solid-body electric guitar that earned him the title Father of the Electric Guitar.

He is considered to be as important to the development and success of rock'n'roll as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly.

Without his noise-making electric guitar the genre would have been inconceivable.

Paul died on August 12, 2009, aged 94.

[Source : theage.com.au]