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There’s a delightful ‘Wizard of Oz’ easter egg in Google Search right now

Published Aug 24th, 2019 4:15PM EDT
Google Search
Image: Photo by Mgm/Kobal/Shutterstock

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In honor of this weekend’s 80th anniversary of the 1939 release of the classic movie musical The Wizard of Oz, Google has added an easter egg to Google Search that’s as richly immersive as the one movie fans may remember from a few months back that was tied to the release of Avengers: Endgame.

You can find it by simply searching for “Wizard of Oz,” at which point you’ll see a pair of twinkling red slippers in the upper right of the search results. Click that to start the fun.

For this, it also doesn’t matter if you’re on the web or a mobile device. If your sound is on, you’ll hear the voice of Judy Garland as Dorothy says “There’s no place like home,” the sound of those red shoes clicking three times (including an animation of the shoes doing so) and some spooky soundtrack sound effects.

At that point, the entire page of your search results will spin around very fast, a nod to the spinning house at the beginning of the movie that takes Dorothy to Oz. You’re then greeted with a black-and-white search results page for all sorts of detail about the movie — in addition to seeing a spinning tornado animation in the top right of the page.

Clicking that tornado (which you can see below) is what takes you back to the normal search results page:

After clicking the tornado, a spinning house animation appears briefly on the page that resembles Dorothy’s family home in the movie. You hear her cry out “Auntie Em!” along with the spooky movie orchestra, and then everything is right back to normal, where you started.

The whole thing is as immersive as the Endgame-themed Thanos easter egg on Google Search back in April, which involved him snapping half of your search results out of existence. Definitely fun to see Google getting into the spirit and honoring movies like this.

Andy Meek Trending News Editor

Andy Meek is a reporter based in Memphis who has covered media, entertainment, and culture for over 20 years. His work has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Forbes, and The Financial Times, and he’s written for BGR since 2015. Andy's coverage includes technology and entertainment, and he has a particular interest in all things streaming.

Over the years, he’s interviewed legendary figures in entertainment and tech that range from Stan Lee to John McAfee, Peter Thiel, and Reed Hastings.