Google's Mars Perseverance celebration is delightfully extra

Unless you've been living under a red rock, you've probably heard that NASA's Perseverance rover successfully touched down on Mars yesterday, where it will spend the next two years searching for evidence of life. Celebrations have taken place across the world, and even Google has joined in – adding a delightful Easter egg to its search results page in honour of the achievement.

Search 'Mars 2020' or 'Perseverance' on Google, and you'll be greeted with a series of celebratory fireworks. It's a small design touch, but hey, after a year in which fun and good news have been in rather short supply, we'll take a digital firework display. Check out our best website builders if you're inspired to create your own firecracker of a site.

It's always fun to see well-known websites having a little fun with their design. Last year, Apple's homepage was taken over by Apple Arcade characters, while YouTube has featured a new logo every week this month in celebration of Black History Month.

Like all of the best Google Easter eggs, the company's Mars 2020 celebration has gone down a storm online, with Twitter users loving the surprise:

Design-wise, Google hasn't has the most auspicious few months. When the company revealed its updated Google Workspace icons (including the controversial new Gmail logo), their plain and confusingly similar designs led to fireworks of a different kind online. It's nice to see that the company's design team is still capable of having a little fun – even if it does require a very specific Google search to be found.

It just goes to show that, despite what some corners of the internet might think, not all web design has to be clean, flat and minimal – there's still room for design touches that are a little, as the youth might say, extra. If we're honest, we wouldn't mind being greeted by fireworks online a little more often. None of our best website templates currently feature built-in pyrotechnics. Just saying.

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