Other than the skills it uses to find things, Google can be a mystery, but it’s full of Easter eggs to make you laugh, smile or make your Internet use easier.
Most of us know Google quite simply as, ‘the site we want to go to when we want to find things’, amongst other variations, but it’s far more complex and complicated than just searching the web for the various musings and important data that we’ve typed into it. On the other side of Google, other than SERPs, keywords and queries, is a fun site that likes to give its users a chance to be a little less productive, but there are also plenty of ways to make a trip to the site even more productive than just looking at Wikipedia, who’d have thought it! We’ve got 7 of the most useful, or comical Google Easter eggs right here.
1. Tilt
Prepare to have a slight crick in your neck with this one as Google’s programmers have decided to amuse themselves by making “tilt” the very definition of the phrase. Head to Google now (or have a gander at our screenshot above) for what “tilt” does to your search results when you type into Google. It’s unlikely to make your Internet searching any easier but it might humour you for a short amount of time.
2. Google Calculator
One of the most useful aspects of Google, is that it actually functions as an in-browser calculator. If you don’t want to fire up the software on your computer or, for whatever reason, don’t have access to the calculator function that you need via an app then you can just type it into Google, hit ‘enter’ and let the search engine do the maths for you. But, in true Google fashion, far more fun can be had if you try out “the answer to life, the universe and everything” or, if you’re already clued up on that piece of pop culture trivia, perhaps you could try typing in “once in a blue moon” to find out about probability.
3. “I’m Feeling Lucky”
Have a topic on your mind with nothing specific to find out about it? Go to Google, type it in and instead of hitting enter right away, press the “Tab” button on your keyboard until it rests on ”I’m Feeling Lucky”. Doing this causes the I’m Feeling Lucky button to spin, selecting a random ‘I’m Feeling…’ to take you to a random page, relating to whatever you typed in, you can watch a video of this Easter egg above.
4. “Define”
Less of the comical description and more of the useful one, “define” is especially useful to writers, readers and people who want to add new things to their vocabulary. Instead of heading over to dictionary.com, let Google do it for you. Type ‘define’ before your word (e.g ‘define vocabulary’) and Google will come up with a short description of what the word means, an example of the word in a sentence, an audio button so that you can listen to it being said and as was the case with vocabulary, it provided an origin for the word, the option to translate it and even a graph detailing the word’s usage over time.
5. Atari Breakout
Atari’s ‘Breakout’ is a classic game, seeing players bounce a ball off of blocks in order to clear them from the board. Google have incorporated that into their Easter eggs and, should you decide to search for ‘atari breakout’ in Google Images, at first you’ll see plenty of screenshots of the game, but these soon shrink down, allowing you to play a version of Atari Breakout with those very same results!
6. Kevin Bacon
By Google definition (via Wikipedia), “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a trivia game based on the concept of the small world phenomenon and rests on the assumption that any individual can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps.” Actors get a ‘Bacon number’, depicting how many steps it takes to link them to Mr. Bacon himself. Where Google comes in is that typing ‘Bacon number [famous person’s name’]’ into the search engine, will provide you with their bacon number, showing you just how connected the world of Hollywood is!
7. Zerg Rush
Classic game ‘zergling rush’ is also honoured by way of Google Easter egg. Typing ‘zerg rush’ into Google will cause a group of ‘O’ letters to appear upon your screen, chowing down on the results of the search, unless you click and ‘fire’ at each one to kill it.
Got any useful or humorous Google Easter eggs to share with us? Do so in the comments.
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