Apparently not wanting to be left out of the hype, Google today rolled out a set of Star Wars-themed Easter Eggs across its set of desktop and mobile apps.
Anyone with a Google account can join in the fun by visiting www.google.com/starwars. If necessary, you’ll need to log in to your Google account, at which point you’ll be prompted to choose to go either to the Light or Dark side. (It was a tough choice, but BB-8 won me over.) From there, you have links to the various Google apps. It implies that there are changes to all of them, but I’ve only come across a few.
The most obvious changes, at least so far, are in Gmail. The loading GIF now shows as a lightsaber, and the background is either a shot of moisture vaporators or that big New Order assembly we’ve seen in the trailers. YouTube has lightsabers–complete with sound effects–for the volume controls.
Google Maps got some updates, but they’re only showing up on my phone, not the desktop version. My work location has the Falcon, home shows Rey’s Speeder, and a Resistance X-Wing marks my current location when navigating. The turn-by-turn navigation voice, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to have changed.
Thankfully, Yoda was wrong in this case. Once you start down the dark path, forever it won’t dominate your destiny, nor will it consume you. You can also go back to the Star Wars page on Google and switch sides.
A post on Google’s official blog teases that more changes are coming in the short few weeks remaining until the release of The Force Awakens, so we’ll have to see what comes next.
So give it a try, and if you find more updates, post them here in the comments so that we can all check them out.
How do I turn this off! It’s damned annoying.