GOOGLE HAS MARKED the birthday of rock legend Freddie Mercury with an awesome homage to the Queen frontman.

The singer, who would have turned 65 today, died in 1991 after a lengthy battle with HIV, is honoured with a brilliant animated Doodle which appears on the Google homepage.

Inviting the user to press ‘Play’, it begins a video who starts off as an animated take on the original Don’t Stop Me Now video before turning into an 8-bit visual celebration of Farrokh Bulsara’s other musical works.

See if you can spot some of the other references to Queen works in the video, which is reproduced below:

Writing on Google’s official blog today, Queen guitarist Brian May described Mercury as “fully focused, never allowing anything or anyone to get in the way of his vision for the future.

He was truly a free spirit. There are not many of these in the world. To achieve this, you have to be, like Freddie, fearless—unafraid of upsetting anyone’s apple cart. …

I remember one morning after a particularly tense discussion he presented me with a cassette. He had been up most of the night compiling a collage of my guitar solos. “I wanted you to hear them as I hear them, dear,” he said. “They’re all fab, so I made them into a symphony!” …

Freddie made the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected. He gave people proof that a man could achieve his dreams—made them feel that through him they were overcoming their own shyness, and becoming the powerful figure of their ambitions.

The Doodle is live worldwide today, September 5, but will only be displayed on Google.com in the United States tomorrow, out of respect for Labour Day.

The Doodle is also a plug for the Freddie as a Day charity, which asks people to dress like Freddie or wear his moustache for a day in order to raise money for the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Feeling musical? Learn how to play some songs on the Google Doodle

Others: Oscar Wilde’s birthday commemorated with Google doodle