This morning Google surprised us with a great election day doodle. The search engine’s logo  has been updated so that every letter looks like a Tunisian citizen lining up to vote. The Tunisian flag was  placed in the middle and a voting booth at the right side of the picture. With more than 7 millions searches a day performed in Tunisia, it is expected that this election day doodle will contribute to motivate Tunisians to go to vote.

Google has made a habit of commemorating people and events on its homepage but this is the first time that Tunisia is featured on Google’s homepage. Before the revolution, Tunisia was considered as an enemy of the internet and many of Google’s services, such as youtube, suffered from government censorship and hacking or phishing activities performed against political activists.

Many Google executives visited Tunisia since the revolution and google.tn was launched in April 2011, offering better search services to Tunisians. This election day doodle is the second move to support the Tunisian elections after the training workshop that took place in Tunis last month. The training was an opportunity to introduce Tunisian politicians to Google tools and social media and to Tunisia Talks, an initiative carried out by Tunisia Live in partnership with Google. Tunisia talks was featured this week on the official Google blog.