Google has introduced a delightful Easter egg for fans of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. By searching for "zelda" or "Ocarina of Time" on Google, users can trigger a nostalgic experience that harks back to the late 1990s.
A glowing, hovering Master Sword appears in the bottom right corner of the search results page. Clicking on it transforms the page into a throwback to 1998, featuring Google's old livery, a bygone logo with an exclamation mark, and search results presented in a classic Times New Roman-esque font. This retro interface eschews modern additions like AI search results, shopping links, and advertisements, offering a glimpse of the web as it was perceived to be more straightforward and relevant.
The timing of this Easter egg is notable, as Google recently experienced a significant stock market downturn. The company lost $475 billion in market value, its worst-performing day on record, attributed to its own AI search product impacting ad revenue. The Kotaku report suggests that perhaps Google should consider extending the lifespan of this Zelda-themed throwback.