Google's Sense of Humor - Easter Eggs and More

Google is the #1 search engine in the world today. It moves millions of revenues in advertising campaigns online. Many people use it on a daily basis and love its simple, minimal interface. But did you know Google has a quirky sense of humor, and they're not always shy of hiding it too?

Google Logos

You might have noticed the Google logo on the main page changing every so often to celebrate some kind of anniversary or holiday. In fact, as I write this article today on 19 Feb, the Google logo is in the form of several sculptures, which is in celebration of Constantin Brâncuşi's birthday. You can view a complete list of Google's logos in the past at http://www.google.com/logos.

The most memorable one, though, was probably Google Pacman, which replaced the logo on the main search page with a mini-version of the Pacman video game (the words Google are still visible in the design), complete with sound. This ran for almost two full days from May 21 to May 22, 2010, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the popular arcade game. If you missed it, you can still access the page at http://www.google.com/pacman. Click the "Insert coin" button", turn up your speakers, and use your keyboard arrow keys to navigate in the game. You can even have 2 players; just insert coins twice, and control Mrs Pacman with the WASD keys on your keyboard. This little act of Google supposedly cost $120 million in terms of productivity (hours spent) worldwide!

Google Search Easter Eggs

Unlike the logos, which are in plain view of visitors to the site, some search phrases that lead to interesting results are not so visible. For instance, type in "the answer to life, the universe and everything" (without quotes) into Google search, and Google calculator returns an interesting answer. A knowledge of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will be useful in understanding the significance of the answer. You can type in the following to get more interesting results from Google calculator: "the loneliest number", "the number of horns on a unicorn", "a baker's dozen" and "once in a blue moon".

Here are some more phrases you can try typing into Google search: "recursion" (check out what Google suggests), "where is Chuck Norris" (you need to go to the main search page and click the "I'm feeling lucky" button instead of the normal search button to get the interesting result) and "french military victories" (again, click "I'm feeling lucky").

In addition, Google has some variations of its main search page, with the buttons labelled in different unorthodox languages. Here are some examples:

• Google Pig Latin (http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/)
• Google Pirate (http://www.google.com/intl/xx-pirate/)
• Google Elmer Fudd (http://www.google.com/intl/xx-elmer/)
• Google Klingon (http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/).

More Easter Eggs

Google didn't limit their hidden easter eggs to just their search engine. Most of its other applications or services have at least one.

A rather subtle easter egg lies in the Gmail web service. Typically, you will see a line of contextual text ad at the top of your mail list when you view your inbox. Go into the spam folder, however, and take a look at the line that's supposed to contain an ad. It displays spam recipes instead.

Go into Youtube (if you didn't know, that's owned by Google) and pause any video. Hold your up and down arrow keys at once and enjoy a distracting game of Snake. If it doesn't seem to work, try maximizing the video after pausing it.

You can view the ninja version of Google Reader by keying in quick succession the Konami code (this was a cheat code used in many video games by Konami): up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, B, A

In Google translate, try translating "quid pro quo" from Latin to any language. A translation of "what happens in Vegas" is done for the chosen language instead.

April Fool's Jokes

Google has done some hilarious April Fool's jokes before. The very first one was the Google Mentalplex back in 2000. It promised the ability to search for users' queries without the user having to type in anything. Be sure to check out the FAQ and illustrations of this amazing service at http://www.google.com/mentalplex/.

In 2002, Google finally unveiled the technology behind its system of ranking pages (pagerank). It was a truly brilliant innovation as you would expect from the top search engine; it used clusters of pigeons. For an in-depth explanation, visit http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html.

One of my favorite April Fool's jokes was Google Romance, introduced in 2006. Essentially, it was a matchmaking service, by the top search engine in the world, complete with the contextual advertising it's so well-known for. Be sure to take the tour, read the press release and FAQ at http://www.google.com/romance/.

Another of my personal favorite April Fool's jokes by Google was Gmail Paper in 2007. It was a free service that allowed you to have physical copies of all your e-mail. Learn more about it at http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/index.html.

There have been many, many other April Fool's jokes by Google. They seem to have ramped up in quantity in recent years, affecting more than a single service each year. In 2008 (the first year Youtube participated in Google's April Fool's tradition), for an entire day, everyone who viewed featured Youtube videos was rickrolled. Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up became even more of a sensation than it already was. In 2010, an exciting new feature of Google docs was revealed, allowing you to store not just files, but physical objects as well. The announcement was made at http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/upload-and-store-anything-in-cloud-with.html.

Conclusion

So, did you know Google could actually be funny? It's always nice to see one of the "big guys" in corporation with a good sense of humor. It certainly can do wonders for customer relations of large corporations when customers are reminded that these corporations are, deep down, actually human. Have you found some easter eggs by Google not listed here? Share them in the comments!