Last month, Google announced a major restructuring of its operations. A new parent holding company, Alphabet, was created to manage many of the diverse projects - from self-driving cars to airborne internet balloons - that Google had previously overseen, while Google itself is becoming a smaller and more focused operation, under new CEO Sundar Pichai.
Today, Google is moving on to the next stage of its reinvention, with the launch of its new brand identity, including a new corporate logo.
Given how widely the Google logo is known - in some parts of the world, its search engine has over 90% of the market - it"s not at all surprising that the company hasn"t been too radical in the new interpretation of its wordmark. Gone is the rather pointy and old-hat logo, replaced by a sans serif typeface, although the visual link with the earlier version is maintained through the use of the company"s familiar corporate colors.
Here"s how Google explained the changes today:
So why are we doing this now? Once upon a time, Google was one destination that you reached from one device: a desktop PC. These days, people interact with Google products across many different platforms, apps and devices—sometimes all in a single day. You expect Google to help you whenever and wherever you need it, whether it’s on your mobile phone, TV, watch, the dashboard in your car, and yes, even a desktop!
Today we’re introducing a new logo and identity family that reflects this reality and shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens. As you’ll see, we’ve taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs (such as tap, type and talk).
The small blue "g" icon is also being retired, as it no longer matches the new corporate style. The company says it will roll out its updated brand identity across its portfolio of products "soon".