Google Search Easter Eggs

Introduction

Hey, Easter is getting close! Couldn’t be a better time to talk about… Google Easter Eggs!

Ok, but do you know what in the “software area” those easter eggs are?

Well, they’re just hidden content included in software (here specifically Google Search), that during normal usage/actions aren’t present, so you have to perform a specific action to activate and discover them. Anyway, they’re not something “useful” at all and their usage is just for pure fun!

Now, after that you have a bit of theoretical knowledge, it’s time to “practice” with the first easter eggs!

Hidden Games

If you love retro games, you’ll probably love the fact that if you search for “pacman” on Google, you get a working version of the game!

But that’s not all, there are lots of other games, for example, search for: “snake”, “minesweeper”, “tris” and “solitaire”.

Other Easter Eggs Searches

What you’ve just seen is the tip of the iceberg! There are hundreds of Easter eggs hidden inside Google Search and I’m only going to point out some of them, here they are:

• “do a barrel roll”: your Google Search page will do a 360 degree turn
• “dutch angle”: a technique used in cinematography to cause a sense of disorientation for the viewer… applied to search results!
• “newton”: remember Newton’s apple? Click on the tree you see on the right of the page and an apple will fall from your screen!
• “new year's eve 2024”: click the party popper for an explosion of confetti
• “meteorite”: search to get your browser hit by a meteorite (don’t worry, your computer won’t break ;-) )
• “diwali”: search the Hindu festival of lights and have a look at the oil lamp
• “drop bear”: a fictional creature, the carnivorous version of the koala, created to scare the tourists, comes to life… click the moving danger sign on the right of the page
• “dvd screensaver”: never seen the dvd screensaver? You have the opportunity to see Google’s one…
• “googly eyes”: Google + googly eyes ➜ Google’s googly eyes logo
• “la tomatina”:  a festival held in the Valencian town of Buñol (Spain) comes to you! Click on the tomato to start throwing tomatoes at will
• “dart mission”: you’ll immediately understand the poor ending of the DART spacecraft…
• “pi”: want to remember the first 16 digits of π? Click the shining pi to start a memory game similar to Simon!
• “puppy”: do you love puppies? Click on the paw, then click on the webpage to place paws all around!
• “anagram”: want to learn an anagram of the word “anagram”? Just look at the “Did you mean: [...]” text… (consider that this may only work if you use the word translated in your language and the anagram originated can change, too)
• “BTS”: hey you… BTS lover! Click on the purple heart!!! (preview below!)
• “recursion”: “Did you mean: recursion (?)”, “No, I definitely was searching for recursion, not recursion”

Quick tip for all these Easter Eggs above: behind most of these there is an explanation, no Easter egg is there randomly,  so make sure to check out the information on the right of the page to learn more about the topic!

I’m Feeling Lucky

Did you ever notice that there’s an “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on the Google Search homepage? Well, if you search for something and click it, it directly opens the first result without needing an additional click.

But… what happens when you click it without inserting any keyword first? You’ll be redirected to the Google Doodles archive, containing all the custom Google logos used for special days (ex. International Women's Day, Valentine's Day, New Year's Day, New Year's Eve and so on…)

Techie Easter Eggs

Warning: Techie Zone, specific language included! (But don’t worry, you can still follow the paragraph by checking all the links at its bottom that will let you discover more about the topics treated)

There are additional Easter Eggs hidden inside Google Search that are tech-related, here I’m going to list the best of them:

• “blink HTML”: in memory of the HTML tag (1) <blink> (2), included originally in Netscape Navigator (3) as a joke and not being officially documented, which has been deprecated and doesn’t work anymore, Google Search will blink all the “blink” words on the search results
• “kerning”: referring to the typographic environment, kerning (4) stands for (simplifying) the space between each character of a text. Google Search will “give space” to all the “kerning” words on the search results
• google.com/humans.txt: contrasted by the robots.txt file usually present on each website to give directives to all the “robots”, technically web scrapers (5) used by search engines visiting it, the file humans.txt instead reminds its readers that Google is created by a large team of humans
• google.com/teapot: referring to the HTTP error (6) 418 I’m a teapot (7), defined in 1998 as an April Fools' joke by the organization responsible for the internet technical standards (called IETF) that make up the Internet protocol, this page is a pure parody. You can click on the teapot and pour the tea! (preview below!)

(1) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_element

(2) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_element

(3) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator

(4) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning

(5) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping

(6) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes

(7) developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/418

Conclusion

Aren’t all these Easter eggs so satisfying to discover? I hope you’ve become mad more than me! If the ones I’ve included in this article are not enough for you, there’s even a page on Wikipedia specifically dedicated to them!

Have you found a Google Search Easter egg you want to share with us? Please do it in the comments section below!

Today’s Blogger

Hi, I'm Giorgio Bellisario, a Liceo Scientifico student. My passion revolves around tech and everything computer-related. Coding is my favourite hobby, and I primarily focus on web development, crafting websites from scratch. If you're intrigued by all things tech and ethical "hacking", you've come to the right place.