Google Terminal
Click inside the window and type. It takes real commands, keeps a history on the up arrow, and prints search results as numbered plain text.
What Is Google Terminal?
Google terminal strips search back to a command line. No images, no buttons, no panels, just a prompt where you type google followed by a query and get four results back as text with the address underneath each one.
The other commands are the ones any shell user reaches for first: ls to list, cd to move around, cat to read a file, clear to wipe the screen, and sudo for the refusal everyone tries at least once.
How the Terminal Trick Started
A text-only search interface ran for a while as a curiosity, and the idea has been rebuilt many times since by people who wanted a working prompt in a browser tab. The commands come from Unix rather than from search itself, which is why the responses feel familiar to anyone who has used a shell.
It belongs with the tricks that change the interface instead of the physics, like google in 1998 and the reversed page.
How to Use Google Terminal
- Click the window so it accepts keys, then type help and press enter.
- Run google followed by anything to get text results.
- Use ls, then cd doodles, then ls again to move through the folders.
- Press the up arrow to bring back what you typed before.
- The buttons below run the same commands if you would rather not type.
FAQs
Is this a real shell?
No. Nothing here touches your machine or any server. Every response is generated inside the page.
What happens if I type sudo?
You are told you are not in the sudoers file and that the attempt has been reported, which is the standard Unix refusal and the joke everybody goes looking for.
Does it search the live web?
It returns a fixed set of listings. The point is the format, not the index.
Which trick is the closest relative?
The google matrix screen, which also replaces the page with plain characters, just moving ones. The rest are collected under google easter eggs.
