: What use could I have for an invalid GIF on my site? I have found a 1x1 GIF embedded directly in Google homepage's HTML: How could I use such GIF on my site? To make it more interesting.

I have found a 1x1 GIF embedded directly in Google homepage's HTML:

How could I use such GIF on my site?

To make it more interesting. I tried saving it through Chrome, then opening with GIMP, but it threw an error. Then I attempted to decode it with a Python script, resulting file was identical as the one that Chrome created and it still didn't work.

So I tried to reverse engineer it with a hex editor. Here is what it contains according to this and this format description:

Offset Value Meaning
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0x00 GIF89a File format version
0x06 0x01000100 Image size: 1x1 px
0x0A 0x00 Packed byte: 1-bit 2-color palette,
no global color table
0x0B 0x00 Ignored without global color table
0x0C 0x00 Pixel aspect ratio 1:1
0x0D 0x2C Beginning of image. Not 0x21 so no transparency
and no animation
0x0E 0x00000000 Image starts in top left corner
0x12 0x01000100 Image size: 1x1 px
0x16 0x00 Packed byte: no local color table, no interlacing

Offset 0x17 should contain image data which is missing, so the file is in fact invalid. I doubt that any program could output a 1x1 GIF which doesn't contain any pixels or even color tables, it was probably crafted manually for some reason.

What's the point of embedding corrupted GIFs in <img> tags? What use could I have for it?