Searching ‘Ever Given’ on Google now shows a celebratory easter egg

Ever Given Ship Google Easter Egg

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you might have followed what was one of the biggest fails in the history of maritime transportation online. The Japanese-owned container ship, Ever Given, got lodged sideways in the Suez canal blocking the passage for other ships and boats and thereby, affecting nearly 10% of the global economy.

Now that the ship has been successfully dislodged and other ships can now pass through the canal, Google wasted no time treating users with a slick easter egg.

When you Google the name “Ever Given,” a marquee of boats appears under the search bar. This could be to highlight the fact that ships are now able to resume their journey through the Suez Canal. It’s worth noting that the easter egg only works on desktops as the marquee animation does not appear on a smartphone.

Ever Given Ship Google Easter Egg

Currently, it appears that the easter egg can only be evoked with the term “Ever Given.” Searching for similar terms related to the situation including “Evergreen,” “Suez Canal Ship,” and “ship stuck at Suez Canal” do not bring up the easter egg.

This isn’t the first time Google has promptly tweaked its search result pages for trending search terms. Back in 2019, when it was the popular American sitcom Friends‘ 25th anniversary, Google enabled an easter egg which played the characters’ catchphrases in animation when a user searched for any of the character and clicked on the animated image in the search sidebar. For instance, searching for Monica Geller brings up a sponge that appears to clean the “Monica Geller” title in animation.

Apart from situational easter eggs, Google also has a long list of permanent easter eggs that work both on desktop as well as smartphones. Here’s the full list of Google easter eggs as maintained by Wikipedia. Some of these have been deprecated, but a lot of them still work.

The latest “Ever Given” Google easter egg comes after the Japanese-owned container ship named Ever Given got stuck sideways in the Suez Canal when powerful winds forced the ship towards the banks of the canal. The mammoth ship, stretching more than 1,300 feet, blocked the passage of hundreds of ships through the canal affecting global economy.

The ship was freed yesterday using tugboats with aid from increased tides. Resultingly, the hundreds of boats that were stuck for almost a week can now safely pass through the canal, resuming the usual flow of transportation that normally occurs in the canal.

Interestingly, while this event was a stress on global economy, it was a boon for meme communities online; especially r/memes on Reddit. Apart from that, it also fueled discussion on the brevity of the situation and the sheer fact that a single ship, albeit colossal, was capable of affecting the entire world.

Let us know your thoughts about Google’s latest easter egg about the Ever Given ship in the comments section below.