Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is celebrating Rubik’s Cube 40th anniversary and has made a virtual cube available on its homepage, which users can try to solve. Rubik cube was popular in Hungary until around 1980 and then exploded internationally. It was created back in 1974 by inventor and architect Erno Rubik.


Interactive cube for users on Google

The interactive cube on Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) homepage is similar to a physical one, and the user can click and drag the cube outside to rotate it and reversing the move to twist. The cube can be found on the Google home page, and will remain there globally through 19th May. Later, users can locate it in the Google Doodle archive. To learn more about the cube one can hit the search icon on the page.

On Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) home page users can find the cube performing a simple loop in which company’s logo is visible. Once it is clicked, the cube becomes bigger and fully colored allowing the user to rotate the rows and columns horizontally and vertically and manipulate the cube as a whole.

A player can track his or her moves as the lower bottom left corner shows number of moves one has taken. No matter how many times it has revolved, the cube can be solved in just 20 moves.

Just 20 moves needed

Rubik took almost a month to solve the cube himself, and it was licensed to Ideal Toy Corp in 1980. It is one of the largest selling toys of all time selling over 350,000 units, and was also popular among children in 1980.

There are nine colored squares on every face of the cube, where the squares can be moved to different positions on the 3D cube to return the puzzle to its original configuration. Solving the puzzle is quite hard until you get the knack of it.

There are players known as ‘Speedcubers,’ who compete with each other to solve the puzzle as fast as six seconds. Every Rubik Cube can be solved in 20 moves, and there are over 43 Quintilian permutations of the cube – that is, unique distributions of the 54 colored squares over the six faces.