So I just went to Google and searched for something, then switched over to Google News to look for recent articles on the topic I was searching, when I noticed something weird. Observe:

They’ve switched up the G in their favicon! It’s jarring, isn’t it? What strikes me as particularly interesting, though, isn’t that it’s a different G, but that’s it’s a different part of the same logo and yet it’s still hardly recognizable. I’m so used to seeing the familiar blue capital G with the red, green and blue lines around it that a lowercase g in a smooth white box is like an alien life form.

It makes me realize how much we underestimate the importance of the favicon as a component of brand identity. It’s surprising how much of a difference a 16×16 image can make, but it does. Most major sites have long since picked up on its importance, though I’m sure many more still lag behind (I can’t think of any off the top of my head… can you?). Still others occasionally just plain get it wrong, I think, as Yahoo! recently did when they stripped Upcoming of its unique favicon in favor of the big red Y!. They certainly wouldn’t do the same to Flickr, so why Upcoming?

Anyway, I’ll try to keep from rambling too much on the subject, but the Google thing really caught me off guard. Looking at the big picture, though (the 64×64 picture? heh), it’s a much better icon for them, and even if the blogosphere pans it (which seems soft of inevitable to me for some reason), I think in the long run it’ll be seen as a good move on their part. Of course, it is a tad strange that their main site seems to have kept the old icon, at least for now. Maybe this is a soft launch of Google Favicon 2.0?