Google Search easter egg celebrates Pelé’s 80th birthday

Kyle Bradshaw | Oct 23 2020 - 12:47 pm PT

On this day in 1940, football legend Pelé was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil. In honor of Pelé’s 80th birthday, Google has hidden a new easter egg into Google Search.

Born with the name Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the footballer we’ve come to know as Pelé received his nickname by accidentally mispronouncing the name of his favorite football player, Bilé. His football career started in June 1956, joining Santos FC at the age of 15, with his coach just before that the time promising that Pelé would become “the greatest football player in the world.” Across his more than 20-year career, he proved that to be correct.

A gem within an already star-studded Brazilian at the age of 17, he’d won his first World Cup by 1958. Edson had helped himself to a hat-trick of World titles by the age of 30. Lifting the Jule Rimet trophy at Chile ’62 and the arguably the greatest ever Brazilian team at Mexico ’70. Not only a clinical finisher on the football field, Pelé has film credits to his name after swapping the famous gold jersey of Brazil for the “Silver screen” in the early 1980s. The Brazilian starred alongside Sir Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone in arguably the greatest football film ever made — “Escape to Victory.“

To honor Pelé’s legendary football career and his 80th birthday, as spotted by USA Today, Google has added a special easter egg to the search results page when searching for “Pelé” or “Pele.” At the bottom of the page, the usual “Goooooooooogle” used to navigate between pages of search results has been replaced with “Gooooooooooal” in an alternating green/yellow pattern.

The link that would normally take you to page 10 of search results now reads “#10” in honor of Pelé’s number during his time with both Santos FC and the New York Cosmos. Above it, the “o” is replaced with a ball, which, when clicked, triggers a cute little animation of the “a” kicking the ball to the G, who performs Pelé’s signature bicycle kick, scoring a goal into the letter “l.” Check it out!

While certainly not one of Google’s most elaborate easter eggs — the easter eggs for Thanos and Fresh Prince of Bel Air come to mind — Pelé is absolutely deserving of this honor. We’re not sure how long this particular Pelé easter egg will be sticking around, so be sure to check it out while you can.

Damien Wilde contributed to this article