What Is Elgoog? Inside Google’s Reverse-Mirror Time Capsule
Type “elgoog” into a search bar and you’ll land somewhere strange. The text reads right to left. The buttons are flipped. And tucked into the menus are games Google built years ago for one-off Easter eggs — still playable, still pixel-perfect, still wildly fun. Elgoog is Google spelled backwards, and it’s the name of a fan-run archive that’s kept Google’s playful side alive long after the company stopped updating it.
Key takeaways
- Elgoog is the name of a third-party site (most commonly
elgoog.im) that archives Google’s old games, doodles, and Easter eggs. - It is not owned or run by Google itself — but most of the content originated as official Google projects.
- You can play Pac-Man, Snake, Atari Breakout, the Chrome Dino, and dozens of other Google doodle games from one page.
- The site exists because Google removes old doodles from prominent placement over time, and elgoog preserves them.
- The original “Google Mirror” Easter egg — typing “elgoog” or “Google backwards” into search — predates the site by years.
The origin of the name
The Google Mirror gag goes back to the early 2000s, when Google search itself would (briefly) flip its homepage if you typed certain queries. The community started using “elgoog” as shorthand for any reversed-Google joke. By the late 2000s, fans were building third-party mirrors that hosted these jokes permanently, and the domain elgoog.im emerged as the most enduring of them.
The site has no formal connection to Google’s engineering team. It’s a labor of love by independent developers who scrape, host, and maintain the games. That’s worth knowing: when you play Pac-Man on elgoog, you’re not loading code from google.com — you’re loading a fan-preserved copy.
What you’ll find on elgoog.im today
Elgoog organizes its content into a few broad buckets. Here’s what you’ll actually use.
Google Mirror
The OG joke. Click “Google Mirror” and you get the Google homepage rendered as a mirror image — text reversed, layout flipped. The search box still works; type a word and the results page shows mirrored versions of normal Google results. It’s a five-second laugh that became a cultural reference.
Retro Google games
This is where elgoog actually shines. The catalog includes:
- Google Pac-Man — released in 2010 as a Google Doodle for Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary. Full game, original sound effects, the works.
- Google Snake — a 2019 doodle Google added when April Fools’ rolled around. Still playable.
- Atari Breakout — the famous Google Images Easter egg. Type “Atari Breakout” into Google Images and the thumbnails became a playable Breakout board. Google removed it from search in 2018, but elgoog kept the game alive.
- T-Rex Runner (Chrome Dino) — the offline game from Chrome, repackaged so you can play it without disconnecting your Wi-Fi. If you want to play the official version, the Chrome Dino game runs right here too.
- Google Coral Reef, Halloween Magic Cat Academy, and other one-off doodles — many years’ worth of holiday and event games, archived in one menu.
“I’m Feeling Lucky” Easter eggs
Old Google power users will remember the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button used to do more than just open the first search result — for certain queries, it triggered themed pages, like “Google Pirate” or “Google Klingon”. Most of these are gone from real Google. Elgoog keeps a directory of them.
How elgoog relates to the Chrome Dino game
If you came here through the Chrome Dino, the connection is direct. Google’s Chrome Dino game (officially called T-Rex Runner) was added to Chrome in 2014 by designer Sebastien Gabriel. It’s open source under BSD-3 — anyone can fork, modify, and rehost it. Elgoog is one of many sites that does so; they bundle their copy alongside the rest of the Google retro catalog.
Some players first discover the Chrome Dino game on elgoog because they don’t realise it’s also baked into their browser. The original triggers automatically when Chrome loses internet — but you can also reach it by visiting chrome://dino in the address bar at any time.
Why elgoog matters in 2026
Big-company games have a habit of disappearing. When Atari Breakout was pulled from Google Image Search in 2018, a lot of people thought it was gone forever. The same goes for most of Google’s older holiday doodles — they’re not hosted on the front page anymore, and most have no permanent home on google.com. Elgoog is a piece of internet history preservation in the same spirit as the Internet Archive: somebody decided this stuff was worth keeping, so they kept it.
That preservation matters because the games themselves are surprisingly good. The Pac-Man port has been studied by indie devs as a clean example of HTML5 Canvas game development. The Chrome Dino has spawned an entire genre of minimalist endless runners. These aren’t disposable. Elgoog is the reason you can still play them on a Tuesday afternoon in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Is elgoog made by Google?
No. Elgoog (most commonly elgoog.im) is a third-party fan-run site. It is not affiliated with or operated by Google. The games and Easter eggs originated at Google, but the site hosting them is independent.
Is elgoog.im safe to use?
The site has been online for over a decade with no major reported issues. It does not require an account, login, or download. As with any third-party site, your own browser security settings and ad blockers apply. We’re not formally affiliated with elgoog — link with normal caution.
Can I play Chrome Dino on elgoog?
Yes — elgoog hosts a copy of the T-Rex Runner game in its retro Google catalog. You can also play the original directly in any Chrome browser by visiting chrome://dino, or play it right here at the top of this site.
What’s the difference between elgoog.com and elgoog.im?
Multiple domains have used the “elgoog” name over the years. The most active archive in 2026 is elgoog.im. Older domains like elgoog.com are largely defunct or redirected. If you find a site that asks you to install something or pay to play, it’s not the canonical elgoog — close the tab.
Did Google ever officially endorse elgoog?
Not publicly. Google has tolerated the fan archives without action — the underlying code for many of the games is open source under permissive licenses, and the brand-association risk is low. There’s no documented partnership or endorsement either way.
Bottom line
Elgoog is the internet doing what the internet does best: somebody noticed that nobody else was archiving Google’s silly games, so they did it themselves. For anyone who grew up with Google’s annual doodle drops or stumbled onto the Pac-Man homepage in 2010, it’s a five-minute trip back to a simpler era. And if you’ve been playing the Chrome Dino game here without knowing it had cousins, elgoog is where you go to meet them.
