Hey how's it going guys, I'm ThioJoe.
Now I'm sure most of us use Google pretty much every single day, for searches, email,
or whatever.
But what you may not know are all sorts of hidden features and easter eggs built into
Google that are only accessible by searching certain phrases.
Some of them are just for fun, and others are a little bit useful.
There are a whole bunch of these, but I'm going to go over what I think are the coolest
ones out there.
So let's get started.
First let's start off with some hidden games that Google has made.
We can begin by just typing in "solitaire" and pressing enter to search.
At the top of the results you'll see a knowledge graph box that says "Click to Play" and if
you do, no surprise, it brings up a game of solitaire.
And you can choose either medium or hard difficulty, and just play it.
Pretty neat.
The second game you can play is tic tac toe, and it's the same way, just type in tic tac
toe, and you can choose either easy, medium, or impossible difficulty.
With impossible, well, it's impossible to win, you can only tie.
The third game is Pacman, a classic.
And this one is kinda funny because it's not the original pacman layout, but it actually
says Google.
I thought that was a nice touch.
For the last game, you actually have to go to Google Images, not the regular search.
Then you type in "Atari Breakout", and it will turn the Google images page and results
into a game of breakout.
You move the cursor at the bottom to control the platform, and bounce the ball to break
all the tiles above.
And as you win each level, it gets faster, and you can see the multiplier at the top
left.
In addition to games, there are a few of what I guess you could describe as "tools", which
I guess might even be useful at times.
The first one is the ability to flip a coin, so you just type in flip a coin, and it will
randomly select heads or tails.
Or if you want a few more options, you can have it roll a die, and it will spit out a
number between 1 and 6.
Then there's another one that's kind of fun, if you just type in "spinner".
It's another number generator, but this time you can have a wheel anywhere between 2 and
20 numbers.
Or if you want to just skip all the animations and pick any random number, you can simply
type in, "random number."
By default it will pick one between 1 and 10, but you can choose any parameters.
Though if you pick one too big it just shows this emoji, that's kinda funny.
So those are all the "tools", and now we can move on to some easter eggs that are basically
just for fun, not useful at all.
If you do a search for "Google in 1998", you'll see that the results page has the really old
Google logo, and a layout that looks a lot different than you're used to.
I'm not sure if that's exactly how it looked back then, but I'm guessing it's pretty close.
One of the funny things is at the bottom, it used to have links to all the old search
engines like Altavista, infoseek, lycos, Yahoo and some others.
Next, another search you can type in is "Super Mario Bros", and in the knowledge graph on
the right, you'll see a question mark box that's blinking.
If you click on that, it just does a little animation and plays the sound effect from
Mario.
In a similar fashion, you can type in "Sonic the hedgehog", and in the same spot this time
you'll see a little picture of sonic.
It's not blinking or anything so it's not that obvious, but you can actually click on
it, and when you do it has him spin and play the sound effect from all the games.
Yet another video game one for anyone who's played Starcraft, is when you type in "Zerg
Rush".
With this it will have a bunch of O's come down from the top of the screen and start
to "eat" the results.
The idea is it's like in Starcraft where you'd just immediately start building zerglings
and attack the opponent.
And you'll see when it's "attacking" the page, there are little health bars.
Another funny thing is if you wait, the O's will move and arrange themselves to say GG.
Moving on, a fun one for the holidays, is to type in "festivus".
And on the left side it will show a festivus pole that extends the length of the page.
And if you don't get that reference, first of all you've been missing out, but it's from
an episode of seinfeld.
It's a made up holiday and instead of putting up a christmas tree, you put up a "festivus
pole" and it's literally just an aluminum pole.
It's a classic, definitely watch it if you haven't seen it.
Next, if you do a search for "recursion", it will suggest the spelling correction of,
recursion.
Wait a minute, isn't that what you just typed in?
Well if you click it, you'll realize that yes, it just puts you in a never ending loop,
which is exactly what recursion means.
Another search you can do is to type in "askew", and as you can probably guess, will show the
results page tilted.
So that one's pretty simple.
Anyone who's been around the internet long enough to remember the HTML "blink" tag, which
for some reason got used way too often back in the day.
Well you can relive that nightmare by doing a search for "Blink HTML", and as you might
expect, it makes the word "blink" do just that anywhere on the page.
Now this next one, I'm sure we've all wanted to know forever.
Turns out Google does indeed know The answer to life, the universe, and everything.
If you type it in, Google will spend 7 and a half million years thinking about it, and
then present you with the answer, which is of course, 42.
And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's a reference to The Hitchiker's Guide
to the Galaxy Books and or movie.
Also classics you'll want to check out.
Next up we can go over one that isn't really search related.
It lets you use Google in alternate languages, including some funny ones.
If you go to the bottom right and hit Settings, Search Settings, then Languages, and show
more, you'll get a big list you can choose from.
Ok, what's so special about that?
Well there are a few notable ones such as, Hacker, which changes all the words on Google
to "l33t speak".
There's also Pirate, which for example changes "I'm feeling lucky" to "I be feelin' lucky".
And there's even klingon, which I have no idea how to read at all.
But you can look through the languages and might find some other neat ones.
So those are a bunch of easter eggs for the main Google Search page, but there are actually
a few for Google Maps as well.
For example, try getting directions from "Snowdon" to "Brecon Beacons", and it will give you
the transit times of varios methods, including by dragon!
Which apparently takes 37 minutes.
And funny enough, they actually show a little easter egg symbol next to that one, I guess
in case someone literally thought you could ride a dragon.
You know there are probably people out there who would.
And similar to that one, you can do directions from "Windsor Castle" to "Buckingham Palace",
and then go to public transporation options.
In this list it will actually give you the option to travel by royal carriage, and it
takes about an hour.
Not the fastest method, but certainly the most stylish I think.
Here's one for those of you out there who are Doctor Who fans, and by the way if you're
not, again you don't know what you're missing.
Anyway, this easter egg takes a few steps but it's worth it.
First go to Google Maps, and go to the address "238 Earl's Court Road, London UK".
Then you go to Google street view, and you should see a tardis down the road, so click
towards that.
Now you're supposed to be able to click near it and directly go inside, but I'm not sure
if that works anymore, though you can still do it another way.
At the bottom left, you'll see a mini map, so expand that and zoom in.
You'll see blue and yellow circles, and the yellow ones represent areas where you can
go inside.
Find the one on the map that is in the same spot as the tardis, click on that, and it
will take you inside.
Now just like in the show, you can actually move around within the whole set just like
regular street view, and explore a bit.
It's kind of tricky to navigate, but you can go up on the catwalks, and walk around the
main console as well.
Pretty neat to check out.
This next one uses a feature in Google Maps street view that you might not have even known
about, so this is kind like a double secret.
If you go to a place in street view, at the top left it will show the date the images
were taken.
But you might not have known that you can click that little clock, and it will give
you the option to go back in time, and see what the street view images looked like in
years past.
So this is already pretty cool, you can compare how things have changed.
But here's the easter egg.
If you look at the Street View guy on the map, you'll see he's changed, and now he has
turned into the character Doc Brown from Back to the Future.
With the wild hair, goggles, lab coat, and he's holding a clock.
And finally, we have not so much an easter egg as it is a hidden feature, is the new
I'm Feeling Lucky button.
As you know, how it used to work was you'd type in a search term, and you could hit that
button and automatically go to the first result without seeing any others.
That ended up becoming obsolete when Google introduced instant search, where it shows
you results as soon as you start typing.
However, the I'm Feeling Lucky button is still there, it just does something different now.
Now-a-days, if you hover over it, it will rotate between a few phrases starting with
"I'm Feeling", whatever.
Clicking it will take you to one of several pre-selected pages on Google, anywhere from
Google Trends to a search for restaurants.
Might be kind of neat to do if you're bored one day.
Though I should point out that you CAN still technically use the I'm Feeling Lucky button
the way it used to work.
To do so, simply click settings on the bottom right, go to Search settings, and select "never
show instant results".
This makes Google behave just like it used to a few years ago, I'm Feeling Lucky button
and all.
So, those are all the cool Google easter eggs I thought you guys might like.
There are lots of others you can look up, but I think these are the best.
Of course there might be new ones later on.
So let me know what you guys think and if there are any really good ones I missed.
And be sure to check the comments to see if anyone found some that are good.
If you want to keep watching, I'll put some other videos right here, you can just click
on those.
And if you want to subscribe, I make new videos every tuesday thursday saturday, should be
worth it.
So thanks again for watching guys, I'll see you next time, have a good one.