Chrome’s ‘No Internet’ Dinosaur Gets a Party Hat For Chrome’s 10th Birthday

Internet connection is not such a big thing anymore nowadays, when most of us are connected every step of the way, especially in busy places such as train stations, airport terminals or simply via phone data.

But in those rare times that we do try to open a Google Chrome page and the Wi-Fi goes down, we get to see the now familiar dinosaur that tells us we don’t have an internet connection.

Now, for a lot of people the dinosaur was a mystery that was left unquestioned, but word eventually spread that it was actually an infinite runner game aimed to keep the users otherwise occupied until the internet connection returned.

I don’t know how many of you have spent time playing it but I remember a particularly long train ride where I tapped at my screen furiously, trying to get over the fact I had no data left by trying to beat the game. Spoiler: I didn’t.

The game was created by Chrome designer Sebastien Gabriel, who wanted to make a joke about going back to ‘prehistoric ages’, before we were all connected by Wi-Fi. Any younger readers would not be familiar with such dark times while the rest of us will remember only being able to go online at home, school or the notorious internet cafés we had available out there.

The dinosaur is turning ten and Google wanted to celebrate it somehow: the 404: Not Found page now features a tiny birthday hat for the dinosaur and apparently a birthday cake and some balloons.

If you want to take part in the celebrations you don’t have to renounce your precious connection for it: simply open chrome://dino in your browser and you can play the game in a full-window environment.

Don’t do as I did and try to beat the game though – it has recently come to my attention that the highest score for the game is currently 19490, and in all that time it never showed any sign of even coming close to a possible ending.