Dinosaur Game
About Company
The Dinosaur Game, also known as the Chrome Dino or T-Rex Runner, began as a tiny Easter egg inside Google Chrome — a simple distraction for when you lost your internet connection. Yet over the years, this pixelated dinosaur has become an icon of internet culture, proving that even the simplest ideas can create the biggest smiles.
The Birth of the Dino
The story of Dinosaur Game begins in 2014, when Google Chrome’s UX designer Sebastien Gabriel and his team were brainstorming a fun way to make the browser’s “No Internet” page more entertaining. Losing connection is frustrating, but what if Chrome turned that moment into a mini adventure?
The result was a small game where a running dinosaur, specifically a Tyrannosaurus rex, dashes endlessly through a desert landscape filled with cacti and birds. The player presses a single key — the spacebar — to make the dinosaur jump. Simple, minimal, and effective.
Gabriel once explained that the dinosaur symbolized the “prehistoric age before Wi-Fi,” making the idea both funny and fitting. At first, the project was nicknamed “Project Bolan”, a reference to Marc Bolan, the lead singer of the 1970s band T. Rex. The name stuck for a while during development, and fans still remember it as a fun trivia fact about the game’s origin.
