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Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg
- chris_wot 14y agoI was searching for information about Zerg Rushes, you insensitive clod!
- Bockit 14y agoI realise you're joking, but for anyone looking for advice regarding how to play SC or SC2, I recommend http://wiki.teamliquid.net/ http://wiki.teamliquid.net/
- iamdave 14y agokekekek
- neiled 14y agoI wonder how Google deal with all these little easter eggs from a code perspective. It's pretty impressive that they can add so much extra to a particular search term without it affecting the overall code quality.
- sev 14y agoI would imagine each search term being something like a key in a database, and each key has an associated field which can link to anything they want. That linker probably then gets attached to a "hook" on their site. It's just a matter of adding in the hooked code into the associated field in the DB. I know I over simplified this, but I would assume that's the gist.
- reitzensteinm 14y agoAlso, the infrastructure already exists for serious reasons, eg Googling for "suicide" will give you a hotline number to call. So it's not like they added the extra complexity for a laugh!
- conradfr 14y agoThat's a great idea but I tried and it gave me nothing. Oh well, time to leave.
- wlesieutre 14y agoIt looks like http://i.minus.com/ibbwHvK38EiDQB.PNG http://i.minus.com/ibbwHvK38EiDQB.PNG for me. Are you in the US?
- mattmanser 14y agoBreaking News: "Google's Zerg Rush drives thousands to contemplate suicide"
- ansgri 14y agoThat's why proper root cause analysis is hard.
- dagw 14y agoSeems to be a US only feature, got nothing in Sweden. The first hit (there are no ads) for "självmord" (suicide in Swedish) is a site offering a guide "for those who have tired of life...and want knowledge about how to end your life in a good way". So no quite the same...
- conradfr 14y agoNo I'm not but I tried google.com and google.fr. It's really U.S specific then.
- rryan 14y agoIt's not US only. These work for me: [selbstmord] on google.de [suicidio] on google.es [zelfmoord] on google.nl Even longer queries like [como suicidarse sin sentir dolor] on google.es worked. I tried a bunch of things on google.fr and couldn't get it to work.
- felixchan 14y agoGooglers have too much time on their hands.
- badboy 14y agoNot too much time but fun spending their time on things like that.
- j_col 14y agoYeah, good to see they are spending their 20% time solving real problems.
- Tipzntrix 14y agoCuring boredom and bringing joy to the user are solutions to real problems!
- j_col 14y agoMore like helping to perpetuate the image that the corporation where I work is a "fun" place to be, helping to improve our image and attract the right recruits. Big G are masters at this, just look at how much positive press they receive around their logo doodles.
- daave 14y agoThat's rather cynical. The project was actually just implemented by a couple of employees who are Starcraft fans, not a mandate from management. The reality is Google actually really is a "fun" place to be.
- j_col 14y agoHence my original point that it was probably done on 20% time (not mandated by management). I disagree that I am being cynical for pointing out the self-evident facts that: 1. Google spends a lot of quality dev hours programming "fun" easter eggs/doodles/April fools sections into their products. 2. These efforts gain a lot of positive spin in the media. 3. This positive spin helps to improve the image of the corporation as a fun place to work/do business with etc. Now given how many hours that go into some of these efforts, I find it difficult to believe that at least some of them must be mandated by management, but to me that's irrelevant: I'd much rather see all of this dev time being spent on: 1. Making Google's products better. 2. Contributing to an OSS project.
- alt_ 14y agoOpera logos attacking page elements? Is there a backstory for this or is it just a coincidence?
- pgsandstrom 14y agoIt's the O:s in the google-logo
- tikhonj 14y agoThat's what I thought at first too. Once I saw the yellow ones it made more sense :).
- Osiris 14y agoThat's funny. That's exactly what I thought when I first saw it. I figured that's because I opened the page in Opera (my default browser) but then I later realized it was open in Chrome. The O in Google explanation makes more sense, but it really does look a lot like the Opera icon.
- LinaLauneBaer 14y agoThis easter egg is referring to the game StarCraft 2 by Blizzard. There are three fractions in StarCraft 2: Protoss, Terran and Zerg. Imagine the Zerg like aliens. Zergs have a unit called "the Zergling" which is a small creature that usually attacks buildings and enemy units in groups. If you have a lot of Zerglings and run to your opponents fast this can be called "a Zergling rush". There are also custom maps that you can play that are called Zerg Rush: You are in the middle of the map and Zerlings are streaming to your bade from all sides. You have to defend it like in the easter egg.
- ehamberg 14y agoWell, I would say that it refers to the Starcraft series. I'm so old that I remember the first Starcraft game – and I'm quite sure it had Zerg. ;)
- doktrin 14y agoYeah, the 'zerg' meme originates from Starcraft. It's been commonly used (often pejoratively) in gaming circles to describe situations in which superior numbers dictated the outcome of an encounter. On an unrelated note, it's rather depressing to think of the original StarCraft game as being something 'old people' remember. I'm 29. Edit : I was kind of surprised to see this meme explicitly explained. I've always thought of it as being one of the most ubiquitous out there.
- DanBC 14y ago> On an unrelated note, it's rather depressing to think of the original StarCraft game as being something 'old people' remember. I'm 29. Do you remember a time before Google? Google was started the same year as Starcraft was released - 1998. (Weirdly Armageddon and Deep Impact were released in 1998) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_film) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998)
- wlesieutre 14y ago
- jianshen 14y agogg!
- imkevinxu 14y agoThe GG at the end was a very nice touch.
- Forrest7778 14y agoI thought the same thing, haha
- athst 14y agogg'ing when you win is so bad manner
- tehC 14y agoNice share! This is the first time that my clicking skills were needed to 'defend' a search result page. :)
- imkevinxu 14y agoWorks on iPad too! High score of 74 :) http://imgur.com/Q52P9 http://imgur.com/Q52P9
- jurre 14y agoI need https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/multitask.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/multitask.html now!
- nkassis 14y agoFor some reason my brain read the last part of that url as "Mutalisk" ;p
- 9diov 14y agoIt is a nice touch how originally there are 6 zerglings coming out and others came in pair. For anyone who never played Starcraft: zerglings are created in pair, two per egg and the maximum number of eggs are 3. A player who attempts to do a zergling rush wait for the first 3 eggs to be available, hatch them and subsequently make a new pair of zerglings as soon as a new egg is available.
- whileonebegin 14y agoI would have liked Google's implementation more if instead of clicking the little O's to kill them, you get to instead make buildings that produce G's or something to defend. Clicking the O's isn't really starcrafty.
- getsat 14y agoI guess you've never tried to focus fire/snipe banelings that are part of a zerg army moving towards your marine bio force. Accurate clicking is very Starcrafty.
- sekou 14y agoIt's coincidental this post is popular because less than a week ago I decided to relive the past and install StarCraft: Brood War to play over LAN. It's still just as fun, but I forgot how easily the game consumes your time.
- TeMPOraL 14y agoAPM counter is a nice touch as well :). (APM stands for Actions Per Minute, where Actions in StarCraft are input events that do something, like selecting an unit or ordering it to attack. Professional players tend to have >200 APM).
- TheCapn 14y ago200 is on the low side? I'm amateur and hit that commonly during games. I think JulyZerg was on record to hit 800 at one point. Lord only knows how that was physically possible. I would credit the source to TeamLiquid's Wiki (I believe) but I cannot search it while at work.
- Brashman 14y agoJuly might have spiked at 800 at some point, but average is around 300 for progamers (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Actions_per_Minute http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Actions_per_Minute).
- oso96_2000 14y agoTo avoid confusion, blizzard recently added something called EPM (effective actions per minute). Those are the one who counts. APM can be spammed or increased a lot by, for example, selecting all the larva in all your hatcheries and making units pressing one key. Pro players have a constant ~200 APM, not only for those moments.
- thomasfl 14y agoIs it Opera Browser logos you're supposed to shoot?
- rplnt 14y agoHalf of them looks like that. It's actually the two "o"s from Google logo. But funny coincidence nevertheless, Opera even tweeted it: https://twitter.com/#!/opera/status/195796939709743105 https://twitter.com/#!/opera/status/195796939709743105
- Tomis02 14y agoI can't get it to work. What gives?
- eliben 14y agoIt even comes in waves of 6-es, brilliant :)
- marcloney 14y ago6 'ling rush FTW!
- astrobe_ 14y agoNo speedlings? what is it, bronze league?
- thetroll 14y agogg and then alt+q,q.. those were the (depressing)times...
- manuscreationis 14y agoWell, shit. This is all I'm going to be doing today...
- zk00006 14y agoGoogle keeps repeating the same trick over and over again. I don't find it funny/interesting any more. How about something new Google?
- Strallus 14y agoThey've done this before?
- zk00006 14y agoSearch: "tilt" for example. I have seen this about 2 years ago and it was really cool. This effect is just iteration on the same idea ...
- cobrausn 14y agoRight, almost as though they had fun implementing the first one and they felt like doing another. Also, google 'do a barrel roll'. Not sure if you've seen that one.
- Kiro 14y agoYes, Google should be ashamed for implementing more than one easter egg. It being something completely different is no excuse!
- recursive 14y agoIn what sense are these the same?
- Tipzntrix 14y agoYou click on them to kill them? That's not how Starcraft works...
- Shenglong 14y agoWell, if this was an attempt to get me to share stuff on Google+, it succeeded.
- scottmp10 14y agoIf someone shares a link to a public Facebook post, do you consider it an attempt to get you to share stuff on Facebook? I find it odd that you assume someone sharing something on Google+ is an attempt to get you to use Google+ rather than an attempt to share the content with you.
- Dove 14y agoWhy today? Do they know something about, say, the HOTS release that I don't?
- kingatomic 14y agoUnimpressed Flash: "I just killed all the little O's, were they supposed to do something?"
- martindale 14y agoI figured this would be easy to hack, and I was right: 1) Insert jQuery into the search results page by using this bookmarklet: javascript:void(function(){if(!document.getElementById('jQscript')){var%20jQscript=document.createElement('script');jQscript.id='jQscript';jQscript.src='https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.0/jquery.min.js;document.documentElement.appendChild(jQscript);}}() https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.0/jquery.mi...); 2) use the console to execute the following, moving all zerglings to 250x250: setInterval(function() { $('.zr_zergling_container').css('left', '250px').css('top', '250px'); }, 50); 3) click away. #winning
- nostrademons 14y agoWhen we were code-reviewing it, we had a bunch of fun trying to hack it programmatically and sharing ridiculously high scores (things like 12,000 zerglings killed). It's not even as hard as you mention: you can simulate a mouseclick on all zergling divs programmatically, and instantly clear the screen of every wave. Then I went and just entered the code to pop up a ShareBox programmatically on the JS console, letting me edit the share message to whatever I wanted it to be. "I took down 1,853,642.93 zerglings with 3.14 * 10^42 APM." And I didn't even need to play the game!
- martindale 14y agoYeah, you had the fortunate ability to view the non-minified version. ;) My first approach was the mouseclick (using $('.zr_zergling_container').click()) but for whatever reason that wouldn't work. I got fed up and just decided to try moving the zerglings to a clickable location. Ha!
- hornd 14y agoHa, I spent a bit trying the same method, and it didn't work for me either. Didn't have the insight to move them though.
- petrosalema 14y ago
- FrankBooth 14y agoSpawn more Overlords!
- fatbat 14y agoInterestingly, I saw this comment on reddit yesterday that was a "leak" about this new easter egg. (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/stek5/what_little_easter_eggs_on_websites_do_you_love/c4gwdwd http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/stek5/what_little... )
- jnuss 14y agoHaving a nice big monitor helps.
- nsns 14y agoIt almost seems like some Freudian reaction to the recent accusations that Goggle search is broken.