Further reading
Best Google Chrome games
Funny questions to ask Google Assistant
Google Home tips and tricks
Google doesn’t shy away from a good joke, and always makes an appearance on April Fool’s Day. If you know where to look, you will discover a myriad of games, facts, and inside jokes the company has hidden within its own search engine and elsewhere on the web. They’ve retired many of them throughout the years — walking directions to Mordor, anyone? — but a host of them still remain. Here are a few of our current favorites, whether you’re looking for a few random facts about the Civil War or prefer a callback to everyone’s favorite hedgehog.
Askew
When you search for the word “askew,” your window will do just that.
Barrel roll
If you ask Google to “do a barrel roll” your screen will do a 365-degree turn.
Bacon number
Kevin Bacon has done so much work in Hollywood that any actor can be connected to him in five steps or less through their work. Going through all the work every actor has done can be tedious, which is why Google took care of it for you. When you type in a celebrity’s name followed by “bacon number” you will see how connected that person is to the Footloose star.
Blink search
Cheeky searches don’t end there. Search for “blink html” and the results will blink at you.
Fun facts
Snapple may have popularized “fun facts” when it introduced them to the underside of its bottle caps, but Google is making them far more accessible. If you’re looking to learn something new — and completely random — simply type “fun facts” into the search bar. I bet you didn’t know that China borders a whopping 14 countries, did you?
Atari
This is the perfect way to play a game at work while pretending you’re just looking for an image. Google image search “Atari breakout” and find yourself in the middle of a game.
Zerg Rush
Starcraft players know and fear the tactic of spamming a bunch of tiny aliens to overwhelm opponents. Search for “Zerg rush” and you can practice the strategy game by clicking on tiny invading Os from the Google logo. The mini-game even counts your actions per minute, and flashes you a sporting “GG” at the end.
Pac-Man
For the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man in 2010, Google converted its iconic Doodle into a fully functional version of the arcade game, instantly causing billions of dollars in productivity loss all over the planet. The game is still live and playable at this address, or just search for “Google Pacman.” You can also play Snake and Minesweeper, if that’s more your thing.
Flipping coins and shooting dice
Search for “flip a coin” and Google will give you a randomized heads-or-tails answer. Do the same with “roll a die” and you’ll get one through six. Unfortunately for Dungeons and Dragons fans, there’s no D20 option.
Super Mario Money
Search for “super mario bros” in Google Search, and you’ll get the usual list of relevant links. But if you look to the right on the page, you’ll see one of the series’ iconic question mark bricks. Click it to get a special surprise (and maybe mute your speakers if you’re at work, since you’ll want to click it again and again).
Sonic
Sonic may not be as iconic as Mario, but for Sega fans, he was everything. Thankfully, if you search “sonic the hedgehog” in Google, you’ll be presented with an animated GIF of the character in the upper-right corner, one that spins and powers up with a simple click of your mouse.
The Game of Life
Unfortunately, you can’t play Milton Bradley’s board game in Google Search, but a query of “Conway’s game of life” will return a basic version of the mathematician’s famous computer simulation in the upper-right corner. If you let it grow long enough it will fill up a large portion of the screen.
Tic-tac-toe
Okay, so maybe the old game isn’t exactly cutting edge anymore, but if you need to kill some time with two people, Google will give you a free board for Tic-Tac-Toe, complete with multiplayer and single-player options. Now you don’t need to find a scratch piece of paper.
Solitaire
If you’d like to kill some time and you’re minus one pack of cards, Google has the classic single-player card game built in with easy and hard modes. Just search “Solitaire.”