The world's most powerful search engine is paying its own tribute following the passing of The Queen. Google has a simple faded grey logo on its home page.
Many newspaper websites have also turned to black banding following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday. People visiting Google and hovering their mouse over the logo will see the words 'Queen Elizabeth II 1926 - 2022'.
The search engine regularly adapts its logo to draw attention to historical events and characters, to honour certain days, or to reflect events in the world. Today it was simply drained of colour.
Tributes have continued to be paid to the Queen from across the world. Chinese President Xi Jinping has expressed his condolences to the royal family over the death of the Queen.
He noted that she was the first UK monarch to visit China, in 1986, saying: “Her death is a great loss to the British people.” The statement added that China was willing to work with the King as an opportunity to promote bilateral relations and benefit the two countries and their people.
In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mourned the Queen as the only reigning monarch most Australians have known, and the only one to ever to visit their country. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told reporters she was awoken in the early hours of the morning by a police officer shining a torch into her bedroom to tell her the news of the Queen’s death.
Ms Ardern said: “The last days of the Queen’s life captures who she was in so many ways – working until the very end on behalf of the people she loved.”
US President Joe Biden signed the condolence book at the British Embassy in Washington, and his wife, Jill Biden, brought a bouquet of flowers. The president was overheard telling embassy staff: “We mourn for all of you. She was a great lady.”
French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the queen’s “immutable moral authority”, her intimate knowledge of and the stability she brought “across the fluctuations and upheavals of politics, a permanence with the scent of eternity”.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who announced this year the British commonwealth intended to become fully independent, said: “We are saddened that we will not see her light again, but we will remember her historic reign.”
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the Queen was “the very heart and soul of the United Kingdom” and that her passing was greatly mourned by everyone in the city-state. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro decreed three days of mourning and tweeted that she “wasn’t the queen for the British only; she was a queen for all of us."
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol tweeted their condolences, and Malaysia’s foreign affairs minister Saifuddin Abdullah mourned the Queen on Facebook as “a towering figure” dedicated to serving the people of the UK and the Commonwealth.
Saudi state media quoted King Salman as saying that the Queen was “a model of leadership that will be immortalised in history”.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a telegram to the King: “For many decades, Elizabeth II rightfully enjoyed the love and respect of her subjects, as well as authority on the world stage. I wish you courage and perseverance in the face of this heavy, irreparable loss.”
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was having trouble believing he had had his last sit-down chat with the Queen: “I will so miss those chats,” he said.
The Pope said he is praying for “eternal rest” for the Queen.
