As India gears up for the biggest festival of the year, Diwali, Google has released an Easter egg or hidden feature on its search engine to dig into the spirit of the festival of lights. Now someone who types in “Diwali” in their search will see an animated earth lamp already lit as part of the results. Clicking on the traditional “diya” causes the screen to dim as multiple earth lamps float on the screen. Slide the cursor over them to light them up as well. The cursor appears in the form of a lit Dia, which emits a yellowish flame wherever it moves on the screen.
The search engine giant hinted in a tweet via its Twitter account that the surprising feature has been rolled out in India. Easter eggs are undocumented additions to software that must be activated by the user to be visible or usable.
just say here
:diya_lamp: :diya_lamp:
:diya_lamp: :diya_lamp:
Search for “Diwali”
:diya_lamp: for :diya_lamp:
surprise
:diya_lamp: :diya_lamp:
:diya_lamp: :diya_lamp:— Google India (@GoogleIndia) October 16, 2022
Users tweeted screen recordings of floating earth lamps on Google search results pages.
Once all the animated lights on the screen are lit, they line up into a constellation of burning lights and then disappear from the screen.
Introduced almost the same functionality [Google(https://gadgets360.com/google)] Catch up on Diwali 2020.
Remember how the first diya was always used to light up the rest?
Saw it come alive in search today. Type “Diwali” into your Google search and click the Diya icon 🙂 pic.twitter.com/3eiFBJgBWa
— PG (@PGAditiya) November 13, 2020
Google often treats its users with quirky animations and hidden features that can be activated with specific keywords.
Searching for characters from the hit sitcom “Friends,” for example, will bring up a different floating animation for each search result.
For actor Matthew Perry’s role as Chandler Bean on the 1994 show, Google revealed the show’s iconic BarcaLounger. Clicking the icon releases Chandler’s pet chicks and ducks from the show to pace back and forth across the screen.
For Monica Geller’s character, a soap-soaked sponge cleaner appeared on the screen and wiped the entire screen. On the show, Geller, played by actress Courtney Cox, is obsessed with cleaning, which seems to inspire the hidden feature on the search engine.