Google offers a wide range of different services, but they still excel at the one that got them their start – web searches. In fact, they’re so good at it that the word Google has been added as a verb (meaning the act of conducting a web search using Google’s search engine) to the Oxford English Dictionary. In addition to bringing up highly relevant search results, Google’s search feature can also do useful things like set reminders and create calendar events. But Google’s search is not just functional, it can also, at times, be quite entertaining with Easter eggs and mini-games to give users a chance to kill some time. Most recently, Google has added two new games to their search page: solitaire and tic tac toe.
The games run directly from the search page, so there are no programs or extensions that need to be installed to play them. They can be accessed from a desktop or mobile browser, and will scale accordingly to fit the device. To access the games, just search for them by name. Searching “solitaire” will put a link at the top of your search results that will launch a solitaire game on your mobile device when clicked. If you are using a desktop PC, searching for “solitaire” will result in a similar link at the top of the search results, but it will open the game in a lightbox over the search page when clicked. Once the game has launched, the player has the option to play on either easy or hard difficulty, with the latter using three cards at a time rather than one. Searching for “tic tac toe” will bring up a small tic tac toe game above the search results, allowing the user to specify whether they want to play as X or O. Fortunately, these games do not interfere with your search results, as the page still displays the full list of results directly below the games.
While most of today’s search engines will usually do a decent job of helping you find what you’re looking for, Google always goes above and beyond to include features that make their web search both useful and enjoyable to use. This is probably why Google has remained the top search option for so many years. The next time you have some time to kill, try typing “solitaire” or “tic tac toe” into a Google search and give them a try.