DEPTH 0
MODE RAIN
Green characters fall and the search box is still under there somewhere
Columns of glyphs drop from the top edge at different speeds. The leading character in each column glows white, the tail behind it fades to nothing. Katakana, digits, a few symbols. None of it means anything, which is exactly right.
The logo sits in the middle of it, backlit, with a cursor blinking after the last letter. You can type into the box and the text stays readable through the rain because the vignette darkens everything behind it.
the two pills
Red speeds the stream up and tints the whole thing warm until you switch back. Blue slows it to a crawl and softens the glow. Neither does anything useful. Both are worth clicking once.
decode mode
Hit decode and the columns stop scrambling. The glyphs resolve, column by column, into readable words drawn from what you typed and from a small set of stock phrases. It runs for about eight seconds and then goes back to noise.
That reversal is the part people replay. Watching structure emerge out of static is more satisfying than the static itself, and it’s over quickly enough that you want to see it again.
depth counter
Top left, next to the stream speed. It counts how many columns are currently active. Widen your browser window and watch it climb, because the rain rebuilds itself to fit whatever space it’s given.
other tricks that eat the interface
Falling code is one way to bury a page. google gravity is another, dropping every real element into a heap at the bottom of the window. google black hole pulls them into a single point instead, which is a much quieter kind of destruction.
If you want green text you can actually talk to, google terminal gives you a working prompt with about a dozen commands hidden in it. And elgoog matrix fans usually end up at the mirrored version of the homepage sooner or later, since the two run on the same reversed-name joke.