On September 27th (and not on day 4, which is the day the company was founded) It’s Google’s birthday since way back in 2005. This year, there are 25 years to celebrate, and for the occasion we got help from the Mountain View company to go a little behind the scenes of online research and discover some little tricks to get to know her better.
Below we have collected 25 of them, some very small and others decidedly more complex and fun, all starting from what you write in the search box. Not all of them are accessible in Italian, but we have reported the translations of those that are (and the direct link for all of them to try them).
Secret Google curiosity: the funny story of how employees also learn by going to the bathroom by our correspondent Emanuele Capone 17 May 2023
Roll a dice
In Italian is Roll a die, allows you to have a die with 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 or 20 faces available and just a click away: dice can be added or removed by clicking on them, and can thus also be thrown together. For improvised Dungeons & Dragons games, if they still happen.
Flip a coin
In Italian It’s heads or tails, allows you to have a virtual coin at hand to twirl to get the answer you need. Because nowadays, who has the most coins in their pocket?
Do a barrel roll
There is no Italian correspondence for this (even if Google Italia talks about “making a whirlpool” in its pages), but the effect is undeniably fun. And surprising, the first time you see it.
Anagram of anagram
This one is thinner and works very well also in Italian: searching for “anagram”, which as we know is the “permutation of the letters or syllables of a word or phrase to obtain another word or phrase”, Google asks if “perhaps you were looking for arma magna”. Which is the anagram of anagram.
Sideways
Only starting from English: looking for the translation of the word “askew”, which in Italian means “across”, the page goes askew. All of it, exactly (but if you click elsewhere, it goes straight back).
Super Mario effect
Searching for the name of the popular video game character you get what looks like a normal results page. And yet, if you click on the coin on the right next to the name Mario, something unexpected happens.
Words that flash
In English, blink means to wink but above all to blink. And blink has long been a command used in the creation of sites, especially in the early 2000s, to make titles or other elements of the page blink. If you search for “blink html”, all the words “blink” present on the results page will flash together. Which is fun at first but less so as you scroll down.
Playing Breakout
Looking for the well-known video game published by Atari in 1976you can click on the first link you get and access a minigame that transforms the search results into blocks and allows you to play Breakout, using the mouse as a controller.
Destroy the results page
Zerg is another fun minigame hidden inside Google since 2012: from the results page, click on Play Zerg Rush and a series of yellow colored circles will begin to descend from top to bottom, gradually eating up all the links.
Playing Pac-Man
If you are looking for information on the hugely popular 1980 video game, the first result allows you to click and try it inside the browser: you use the mouse to move and escape from the ghosts and the size of the game area can be increased by zooming.
Playing Snake
Now that Nokia phones aren’t what they used to be, today’s 40-year-olds can go back to the little game they spent their fingertips playing, doing more or less the same as with Pac-Man: you are looking for information on Snakeclick Play and use the directional arrows on the keyboard to control the snake. Warning: it’s just as addictive as it was 25 years ago.
Play Solitaire
Like above: looking for the popular card game (also in Italian)click on Plays and you can actually play. Even choosing between two levels of complexity.
Don’t play Tetris
Perhaps the most famous of video games, Tetris can be played on Google (like the previous ones) but you can also just watch: after setting a specific search key, click on the first result and you can stare at the screen which fills with colored geometric shapes. Without intervening until the end.
What is Elgoog
Some of the minigames mentioned so far are linked to doodles created for some specific anniversary, but a lot of it is hidden behind elgooG. Written like this because it is Google in reverse, Google mirrored, a set of pages in which the results are flipped horizontally. Once arrived on the home page (which is this), you choose an item and then you can scroll through all the others using the arrows on the right and left of the screen. Completely at random and without an order, because “I am elgooG”.
Through the mirror
The perfect example of what can (not) be done with elgooG is Google Mirror or Search Mirror, also known as Google Upside Down: it’s a page where everything is reversed, the logo is on the right, the snippets are on the left, where you can search but find nothing. Just the page turning on itself.
Google in 1998
Equally useless (in the sense that it no longer works) but certainly more interesting to understand what we were like and where today’s adults did their research a couple of decades ago, the page you arrive at by searching for information on “Google in 1998”. The search field can be filled in, in that strange font that was used back then, but then it doesn’t go anywhere.
Snap your fingers like Thanos
Another fun thing you can do using elgooG is to search for “Thanos snap” (the famous snap of the fingers with which the Avengers’ adversary decimated the world population in the film Infinity War) and click on the first link: you will arrive on another page, click on the glove on the right and you will see the search results dissolve. Among other things, their number is gradually decreasing.
The loneliest number of all
Curiously, here the results differ depending on whether you search in English or Italian: in the first case, as “loneliest number” the number 1 is indicated; in the second, as the “loneliest number” 0 is indicated.
The case of number 42
This, together with “Do a barrel roll”, is another of Google’s great classics. From whom we really ask for everything now, including the “answer to the fundamental question about life, the universe and everything”. Which is obviously number 42, as anyone who has read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy knows well.
The Bletchley Park Mystery
During the Second World War, the Bletchley Park facility was where the British army coordinated counter-espionage activities and deciphered the codes used by the Nazis (this is the story told in the film The Imitation Game): searching for information on Google, it will appear encrypted on the right side of the screen. For a few seconds, just long enough to be deciphered.
“What if…?”: 25 years of Google and the importance of the right questions by Riccardo Luna 06 September 2023
What sound does the cow make?
Or the owl, the bat, the leopard, the robin or even the guinea pig. Just look for information on the sound made by any animal to find yourself in front of a dozen icons that you can click to listen to. And there are still others by clicking on Other verses, which can also be activated together for a sort of zoo effect. The crocodile is not there, because we know that how he does “there is no one who knows”. But there is the alligator, which is still something.
To set things straight
In English but also in Italian: searching for “bubble level” or “bubble level”, you get a level on the screen that allows you (precisely) to check whether a piece of furniture, a painting or anything else is straight or not. It works from a smartphone, because you can’t use your computer monitor as a level.
To keep time
A fundamental tool for musicians, especially at the beginning, the metronome can also be replicated on Google: you search for the word, you set the BPM value and then you can proceed to do what you need to do.
The love equation
On Google you can do some mathematical operations by simply typing the numbers and various symbols in the search field. But also solve incredible equations like (sqrt(cos(x))*cos(500*x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.4)*(3-x*x)^0.1. Which was designed for Valentine’s Day, to give a clue as to what the outcome will be.
Finish in the loop
Simplifying (very much) recursion is the repetition of a concept or image: the classic example is a person wearing a t-shirt on which there is a photo of himself wearing a t-shirt on which there is ‘is a photo of himself wearing a t-shirt on which is a photo of himself wearing a t-shirt on which is a photo of himself wearing a t-shirt on which is a photo of himself. This identical, annoying repetition can be replicated on Google: by searching for “recursion”, the results page will repeat endlessly. Even with the question “maybe you were looking for recursion”, he kept asking it after you actually searched for “recursion”.
@capoema