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New Google Favicon Deja Vu All Over Again?
theodp writes "Last June, Google rolled out a new favicon, the small branding icon that graces your URL bar when you visit Google. Which, as it turned out, bore a striking similarity to Garth Brooks' Circle-G logo. Well, Google went back to the drawing board and has come back with a new favicon, which it says was inspired by — not copied from, mind you — its users' submitted ideas. Some are also seeing inspiration elsewhere for the new favicon, which consists of white 'g' on a background of four color swatches. Take the AVG antivirus icon, for instance. Or everybody's favorite memory toy, Simon. Or — in perhaps the unkindest cut of all — the four-color Microsoft Windows logo, shown here with a superimposed white '7'. Anything else come to mind?" What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.
Andre Resende got it right in the first place.
It is my opinion that the favicons for a site are very important for recognition (e.g. for completion in the URL bar) for the average user.
Favicons are not necessarily tiny actually. Konqueror has the feature (that I like very much) to set the favicon as the application icon. That has the nice effect that in your pager (the virtual desktop manager in the ) the window area is filled with the favicon. Very nice for switching desktops to the right browser window.
Thirdly, I use http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/27548
It helped me to completely block out that google changed their favicon to an ugly one I can't associate with their website and I can live in my tiny world where they didn't.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
There is also a firefox addon which lets you pick your own favicons. I've got my whole bar filled with every site i'll ever need that way. :D
Also, why are RGBY Google's colors?
I have absolutely no idea.