Google's Marissa Mayer Explains The New Favicon

[engine]

You may have noticed that Google has a new favicon, the small icon you see in your browser next to the URL or in your bookmarks list. Some people have wondered why we changed our favicon -- after all, we hadn't in 8.5 years(!). The reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices. So the new favicon is one of those, but we've also developed a group of logo-based icons that all hang together as a unified set.

Google's Marissa Mayer Explains The New Favicon [googleblog.blogspot.com]

[trungngo]

Yes. Old one definitely look better. Scale 1-10, old get 9, new get 3.

[arieng]

By no means is the one you're seeing our favicon final;

Google likes feedback. I think they wanted to get this out there to see what people thought, but I doubt this is what we'll be seeing six months from now.

[Hugene]

lower case = bad idea. Looks like a snake.

[XtendScott]

Looks like the icon for "the guardian" at gardian.co.uk

[edited by: XtendScott at 5:11 pm (utc) on June 9, 2008]

[pageoneresults]

It looks like the lower case "g" in Google, like it should. I also like the "infinity" undertone, its a given using this style font (Catull®), not all lower case "g"s look like that. :)

It looks like The Gorg is taking its final shape. :)

Wow! All this dicussion over a little 16x16 icon, this thing must be really important. Let me review my favicon libraries again to make sure I didn't miss something...

[matimer]

Google finally caught the web 2.0 bug next change domain name Googlr.com

I think it looks like an 8 and I always forget where my google tab is at without seeing the "G" tastes like New Coke to me

[cnvi]

only a company that is at bloated as google would waste so much time and resources on 300 variations of what you and I would have done: drop a g on a white background and call it a day.

[physics]

My first thought was that it looks like the GPL Ghostscript icon (not the favicon on this link but the image at the top).

[pages.cs.wisc.edu...]

Actually I thought at first that some Firefox extension I installed had made the change ... it just didn't look very Googly.

[LifeinAsia]

She also berated me for being presumptive in giving it a "Grade C" when I didn't fully understand the reasoning behind the new choice.

But I think what she is forgetting is that the vast majority of Google users do NOT have Graphic Arts degrees and therefore do not understand/care what Google's rationale was for changing. All they know is that they don't like it (or that they do like it) better.

[webfoo]

This is ridiculous. For one, it's ridiculous that Google made a needless change. For two, it's ridiculous that we have nothing better to do than complain about how 3% of our screen space is used.

But while I'm at it, here's my take: I don't even remember what the old logo looked like, so that shows how unimportant favicons really are. For some reason, Google thinks they're important, and they are usually onto something. So I'll just watch and learn.

[Lord Majestic]

Old one was much better.

[zett]

In my opinion they should have hired another programmer for the Adsense program, e.g. to fix apparent problems (filter, preview tool, channels, just to name a few) instead of wasting it on a new favicon that is hardly noticed by people. The old one (what was it again?) looked certainly good enough, and to say a change was "necessary" is just bloated marketing thinking.

Well, my $0.02 anyway.

[SEOMike]

I like the new favicon. I think it's nice and sleek. It does have a little bit of a branding issue though because it's not as immediately recognizable as part of the Google brand. They've never emphasized the lowercase g before... I wonder why they're starting now.

[pageoneresults]

I believe they are starting now because the Catull® font has a very nice set of lower case letters. Much nicer than the upper case. So, if they are planning to create an entire library of favicons based on the product, they have a much better letter set to work with using lower case.

[np2003]

Vote for old G, new G looks weak.

[JoeS]

I don't like this new favicon. Looks terrible. Already have seen it over a week. Not sure how this new G symbolizes Google.