The search box is floating and it will not stay still
Water fills the frame, light bends across it in slow diagonal shafts, and the logo bobs like it’s tied to something below. Each letter moves at a slightly different time, so the word never quite lines up. Sit with it for a few seconds and it starts to feel less like a webpage and more like an aquarium somebody put a search engine in.
Fish drift in from both sides. They don’t follow a path, they just wander, turn around when they hit the edge, and occasionally take a run at a bubble.
Say the magic words
Type more fish please into an underwater search and the tank fills up. Here it’s a button because typing it every time got old. Press it as often as you like. The counter in the corner will happily go into the hundreds and the tank will get genuinely crowded.
Things people ask about this one
- Can you actually search anything
- The box is real enough to type in. It’s the surroundings that are the point, not the index behind it.
- Why do the letters move separately
- Each one has its own buoyancy timing. Sync them up and the whole thing looks like a GIF instead of water.
- What does the food do
- Pellets sink slowly and the fish break formation to chase them. It’s the only time they move with any urgency.
- Is there a version where it sinks
- Yes, third button. The box and the buttons drop to the sand and stay there, which people call google underwater gravity.
Related messing-about
Floating is one of a few ways to make a page ignore physics. floating google does it in air instead of water, so everything rises straight off the screen. Flip the direction and you get google gravity, where the whole interface collapses into a pile you can pick up and throw.
If you want the page reversed rather than submerged, google mirror search turns every letter backwards while keeping it functional. For a much colder version of weather on your screen, let it snow google buries it instead of flooding it.
And when you’re done watching things drift, google snake is right there for something with a scoreboard.