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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.
What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.
You mean like the Slashdot editors who think it's important enough to put on the front page?
The Garth Brooks one is particularly ridiculous---the only similarity appears to be that both have, at various times, used a lowercase 'g' in an entirely unremarkable font as a logo. Yes, congratulations, two instances of a lowercase 'g' can look similar!
The rest aren't much more convincing. Google uses some simple arrangements of primary colors, and, amazingly enough, so do some other companies, even some other tech companies. But they don't even look particularly similar (especially the Windows one).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...because lynx does not support favicons, you insensitive clod!
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
This is such important news. Man, the people at the New York Time s are going to be kicking themselves if their morning paper has already been sent out to the printer.
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What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.
Maybe editors are so hard up for pageviews that they'll post whatever inconsequential slop comes to mind, and internet users are just so hard up for interesting news that they'll comment on whatever garbage the editors feed them.
If the tech sites puked out story after story about motherfucking lolcats apparently Timothy would take the comments to indicate mass obsession with them, which, shit... bad example.
But seriously, who is actually obsessed with Google's favicon and who is just bored?
Almost a direct copy of an Austin-based printing company's logo: http://www.ginnysprinting.com/
How many different ways can one make a trashcan icon?
... the "S" in Slashdot looks similar to the "S" in MicroSoft!
Looks like a blotch of random colors. I had no idea there was a lowercase "g" in it until I read the article here.
IMHO, the old favicon was much better - knew right away what it was. A bunch of random colors brings to mind websites about photoshopping, psychology (think blotch tests), or even a pet supply site, since it looks kinda like a paw print.
Ron
Everyone knows that it's spelled Micro$oft.
Looks like a red-beaked parrot to me.
You're right, it is an inkblot test. And apparently I have some repressed issues with parrots.
Yes, as far as I knew that is what it is called.
What I have learned so far from this article is:
What falls in the what else is new category:
PK
Engineers arn't boring people, we just get excited about boring things.
I can't stand it, the g that is entirely reprasentative of the company doesn't stand out anywhere near clearly enough, the entire thing is just a blob and it makes tracking Google tabs in firefox a nightmare.
The user submitted favicons FTFA by by Hadi Onur Demirsoy, Lucian E. Marin and Yusuf Sevgen are all considerably better.
Andre Resende got it right in the first place.
The purpose of a website's icon -- or any icon, for that matter -- is to provide a visual way to quickly find something in a list. Sometimes, the icon represents some abstract concept; in most applications, the "save" icon is a floppy disk, even though they're nearly obsolete. However, if the icon is unique, experienced users have no trouble connecting it with what it represents. I use icons exclusively for my bookmarks toolbar.
Of course, this only works when the icons don't change. Google has recently changed their icon again, just as I was getting used to the second one. Call me old-fashioned, but I happen to like the original Google icon.
I can understand changing the logo on the front page for special holidays (which seems like just about every day now), but icons shouldn't be changed just for the hell of it.
(C&P from my blog)
Right on! You tell them! Clearly the lack of keen insights such as yours into the nature of critical elements such as a favicon is what is holding Google back from becoming a hugely successful juggernaut of a company...
Oh wait, they are a hugely successful juggernaut of a company... so much for your keen insight. Maybe you should stick to lecturing the indecisive hippies in your class.
>Clearly the lack of keen insights such as yours
...but you're right, they are clearly beyond saving in this area. :-)
s/insights/experience
>hugely successful juggernaut of a company
Uhh, yeah. You mean a very rich, successful company. And a company that is going to have one jacked up corporate culture in 15-20 years. We're still waiting to see how that part's going to develop. These companies get so big so fast, full of so much hot air, that we end up paying a creativity tax years down the road as they raise service fees to pay for all the middle managers who got in while the getting was good.
Sure, right now they're a big successful company with a lot of engineering divas and XKCD readers who think that they can literally do anything they want in life, and every door is open to them.
From my experience, immature corporate policy just feeds this crap. Individual personalities will differ; I'm sure there are some fantastic people there. But I'm talking not about money, or about individuals. I'm talking about the company's personality. How deluded it is. How many people are going to get cut once the hubris levels come down a bit. How long they can do no evil when they can't even publish guidelines for duplicating a graphic logo (that I've been able to find...)
>Maybe you should stick to lecturing the indecisive hippies in your class.
Yeah, sure. And you stick to heckling the lecturers of said hippies.~
The original (the old old) logo was way better.
Amen to that. I thought I was the only one that thought the original blue G on white background was great. It was simple, clean and unmistakable. Now it is getting worse and worse with each iteration.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
... it just looks pathetic. I started noticing this at the weekend, and just thought : Why are they using such an amateur looking icon. The firefox search bar icon is so much better.
the icon is gay.
It wasn't broke, but somebody in Marketing just had to fix it.