London, Oct 2 The search engine Google on October 2 decorated its home page with a sketch of Mahatma Gandhi on his 140th birth anniversary.

The page, seen by millions of people around the world every day as they search the internet, showed Gandhi's face - the dome of his head and mushtacheo forming the initial letter 'G'.

Gandhi joins a select band of people to have featured in 'Google's doodles', which include Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Confucius, Luciano Pavarotti, Dr Seuss, Andy Warhol, Claude Money, Louis Braille, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and, posthumously, Michael Jackson.

The doodles are overseen by Dennis Hwang, who joined the company in 2000 and has been using the logo to mark particular dates or events.

Last week Google released a special misspelt version of its own name - as "Googlle" - to mark the company's 11th birthday.