It takes real commands, not fake ones
Type ls and you get a directory listing. Type calc and a sum, you get the answer. Type something it doesn’t know and it tells you so, in the same flat tone every shell has used since the seventies. Nothing here pretends to be doing more than it is.
Up arrow walks back through what you’ve typed. Tab completes a command if there’s only one match. Both of those matter more than any of the actual commands.
Worth typing
Fortune gives you a line and then shuts up. Whoami is the shortest joke in the file. Search takes whatever you give it and returns results that look right and are entirely made up, which is arguably the most honest thing on this page.
There’s one command that isn’t in the help list. It’s the sort of thing you’d try if you were poking at an unfamiliar shell, and it does something.
The history is yours only
Everything stays in the page. Reload and the session is gone, help is back at the top, and you start again. No accounts, nothing saved, nothing sent anywhere.
Why a terminal at all
Search boxes and command lines are the same idea wearing different clothes. You type a string, something comes back. Turning one into the other is a small joke about how little the interface actually changed in twenty-five years, which is also roughly the point of google in 1998.
Other text-first pages
Google matrix is the version where you watch characters instead of typing them. Google mirror keeps the search box but reverses everything in it. Goooooooooogle is the least interactive thing on the entire site and people love it anyway.
Games and effects are all on google easter eggs.
