People Are Still Discovering That Google Chrome No Internet Dinosaur Is A Game

The poor old Google Chrome no internet dinosaur is greeted by most of us with a sigh - our attempts to surf the world wide interweb thwarted.

But perhaps the Chromasauras would get a warmer reception if more of us knew the dino is actually there to distract and entertain us during our disconnectedness.

If you've ever pressed the space bar on the no internet page, then you'll know the dinosaur is part of a game embedded in the page, which sees the little guy scampering from left to right, with loads of cacti appearing in its path.

Your job is to tap the space bar at the right time, enabling him to leap over the spiky plants and continue scampering endlessly.

When I say endlessly, I'm not really exaggerating.

Edward Jung, one of the game's creators, said in an interview for Google's blog The Keyword: "We built it to max out at approximately 17 million years, the same amount of time that the T-rex was alive on Earth... but we feel like your spacebar may not be the same afterwards."

The game first debuted on the browser back in 2014 and is now played about 270 million times every month. Still, there are many of us - myself included up until half an hour ago - who seemingly didn't get the memo about the Jurassic jumping game:

Somewhat surprisingly, given the game basically just entails pressing the space bar occasionally, it appears to be distractingly addictive - so much so the creators had to develop a way of disabling it.

Edward said: "It also got to the point where we had to give enterprise admins a way to disable the game because school kids - and even adults who were supposed to be working - really got into it."

But fear not if you're now really intrigued but unfortunate enough to have a solid internet connection, 'cause you can play while online too by visiting chrome://dino.