Google's Top 17 Easter Eggs, Gags, and Hoaxes
Google makes your life easier with great search, but did you also know it's loaded with pranks, goofs, and put-ons? We show you the best of the bunch.
Tom Spring, PC World
Something Spooky Just After 3 A.M.
You could take the high road (or the low road) to Scotland's Loch Ness in hopes of spotting the elusive Nessie, the legendary monster said to reside there. But if you'd rather do your mythic beastie viewing at home in the wee hours of the morning, set your alarm to 3:14 a.m. and your browser to the Beach themed iGoogle page. At precisely that o'clock each day, Nessie surfaces for 60 seconds, then takes a deep breath and dives back under the dark loch's surface. Why that time of the morning? Well, according to programmer's lore, Google developers did it to pay homage to the mathematical quantity pi. Other iGoogle pages using themes have spooky Easter eggs of their own. In the Seasonal Scape, the Northern Lights also appear at 3:14 a.m. Look for UFOs to descend on the City Scape. A monster appears in Spring Scape; and in the Tea House theme, ghostlike fox spirits (well known in Japanese folklore) appear and disappear in the mist of the lake as the fox sleeps.
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