The Best Google Easter Eggs Of 2022

Google is the go-to search engine for the internet, handling over 92% of the global volume for search engine queries (via Statcounter). With such a serious role to play, it's possibly surprising to find that the Big G has an advanced sense of whimsy. The most obvious evidence of this is the Google Doodle, which has replaced the Google logo on the search page over 5,000 times since its inception. There is another, more hidden set of whimsical animations in Search, with a growing list of Easter eggs.

These are hidden but easily found activities appearing when the right words are searched. The first of these was a fully-playable Doodle of "PAC-MAN," created in 2010 for the 30th anniversary of the game. Now there are dozens and dozens of Easter eggs, with Google adding more every year to commemorate special occasions, dates, and sometimes posthumous tributes. Here are our favorite new Easter eggs from 2022 and the first couple of 2023 to start the year off.

One day in 2022 was graced with its own Easter egg due to the special way its date could be written either forwards or backward. That date was February 22, 2022, or 2-22-22. That's a palindrome, reading the same whichever way you read it. It's even a palindrome in those countries that use day/month/year order for the date. To top it off, the date fell on a Tuesday, so it became colloquially known as Twosday. The next date that will read as a unique palindrome in this way is March 3, 2033. The next non-unique palindrome date is March 20, 2023.

For Twosday, Google put a celebration into search. Looking for "twosday" gave you the usual mix of news and other websites with stories about the date. So did the first time you searched the date. The search results also had a button at the bottom that looked like a party popper. When clicked, it threw confetti, the number 2, and a message saying "Happy Twosday to You" over the browser tab. 

Many other people and companies celebrated this date. The Californian State Capitol in Sacramento hosted 222 couples for a mass wedding. Fast-food outlet Jack in the Box gave away two tacos with any other order because it was also Taco Tuesday. And multiple restaurants had drinks deals, as it happened to fall on National Margarita Day.

Fans of the survival-horror game "The Last of Us" have been anxiously awaiting HBO's adaptation for its streaming video service. Joel and Ellie's trek through the post-apocalyptic U.S. after a mutant strain of the cordyceps fungi turned most of the world into zombies is nearly 10 years old, but that hasn't dampened enthusiasm for the series, which launched recently to critical acclaim. It's been doing numbers, with the largest week-two growth for any HBO Original series in the network's history. The show did this thanks to HBO signing on the creative director for the games, Neil Druckmann, for both writing and directing credits, ensuring that existing fans would relish the new adaptation.

Google seemingly loved the search volume for the blockbuster series and has created a new Easter egg to accompany it in search. Searching for "The Last of Us" or "cordyceps" pops up a mushroom button over the search results. Clicking on that button starts to cover the search page in fast-growing fungi; the more you click, the more fungi appear.

To say that the K-pop supergroup, BTS, has a dedicated fanbase is a gross understatement. The group's fans are called BTS ARMY (Adorable Representative MC for Youth) and have a huge social media footprint that they use to drown out objectionable content (via BBC). The fanbase got its name almost a decade ago and was commemorated by Google in a search Easter egg that went live on July 9, 2022 (via Variety). The members of the K-pop group also got a second unique feature, BTS x Street Galleries, which mashes art curation by the singers with 14 Google Street View places that have special significance to the band. Fans can create street galleries in these virtual locations.

The BTS ARMY can also get some special words of wisdom and appreciation from the band members by searching "BTS" on Google.com. When the search results load, a purple heart with a color-changing microphone inside bounces around above the callout box. Clicking on this heart starts a stream of purple balloons to float up over the screen. Typical balloon shapes can be popped to leave a purple stain on the tab. The heart-shaped balloons with microphones inside can be popped to get written and audio messages from the band members.

The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is the "second-longest, continuously held sporting event in the U.S.," according to the pawesome, pampered, pedigree pooch pageant (via CNN). With that lineage, it's a slight surprise that it took until 2022 for Google to create a custom Easter egg for the show. When "Westminster Dog Show" is searched for, a light purple button will also appear next to the name of the show, with a paw print on it and an animated dog leg that shows you what to do. 

Once the purple button is clicked, you can click anywhere on the search tab to get a randomly-colored dog paw to come onto the screen and lay down a pawprint. You'll also hear excited barks, so keep that in mind if your computer has a speaker setup. This mode stops any links on the page from working, so you can deface the results with impunity as if it was a static printed page of newsprint. Unfortunately for those who would want to create tracks, the paws come from randomly chosen sides of the screen, so your efforts to line up the prints will be in vain. When you've had enough fun, hit ESC to wash away all of those pawprints.

Google has long supported Gay Pride in myriad ways, from grants, collaborations with institutions and artists, and various Google Doodles. When the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage would be legalized at the Federal level, Google changed its social networking icons rainbow, created a video celebrating marriage equality, and linked it to everything Google owns. The company also has multiple Pride-related Easter eggs hidden in its software, like the one in Google Sheets that makes the columns rainbow-colored if you put P R I D E in the first five columns.

Google Search also has multiple Easter eggs to celebrate Gay Pride. Searching for "gay pride" or "LGBT pride" show an animated rainbow heart icon in the callout box on the right of the search results. Clicking on that heart throws rainbow confetti all over the page, and a parade of the various LBGTQ+ flags marches proudly at the bottom of the screen. This colorful expression of love also shows up when you search for a familiar character from "Scooby Doo." That's right, Velma is officially out and proud (via Variety), and searching for "Velma," "Velma Scooby-Doo," "Velma Dinkley" (the character's full name), or "Dinkley" all give the same parade of love and flags.

In 2021, a group of researchers at Harvard came up with a new theory about how the dinosaurs were wiped out. The existing facts were not in dispute; that the dinosaurs suffered an extinction-level event some 66 million years ago and that a massive crater known as the Chicxulub impactor off the coast of Mexico was the best evidence of the reason for the extinction. This crater is some 93 miles wide and 12 miles deep, so something huge must have collided with our planet. The new study used simulations and analysis to figure out that the rock that created the crater is most likely a piece of a long-period comet from the Oort cloud that was torn off as it came close to the sun. This piece then took a different orbit on its return to the Oort region and was stopped short by the Yucatán Peninsula in South East Mexico.

In 2022, Google added a new Easter egg for anyone searching "Chicxulub impact crater," adding a little extra to the search results. A large chunk of rock comes burning up in the atmosphere from the left of your screen, passing out of view on the bottom right. A split second later, your search window shakes to simulate the impact.