Google has a new, all blue favicon — did you notice?

Favicons are one of those small niceties of the Internet; they allow users to quickly visually recognize a website without having to read any text, such as when navigating between multiple tabs or bookmarks. Google, one of the most popular (if not the most popular) digital destination on Earth, has just recently changed its favicon. Did you notice?

Google’s latest favicon, which is its fourth favicon in its online history, comes in all blue with the letter “g” featured. It isn’t entirely clear why Google picked blue this time around but we know the “g” is used because of its similarity to the infinite symbol, which in turn relates to Google’s play-on-words of googol, a mathematical term used to describe a number that has 100 zeroes at the end of it (aka a huge number). Interestingly enough, this new favicon is a flashback to Google’s second favicon that was introduced in 2008 (the one before the just-deprecated favicon) — the new, all blue favicon has the same “g” the favicon of 2008 had.

If you can’t see the new favicon yet, try any of the following:

  • Hit Shift + F5 on your keyboard when on Google’s website.
  • Go to http://google.com/favicon.ico, hit Shift + F5 on your keyboard, and go back to Google’s website.
  • Clear your browser cache and refresh Google’s website.

I don’t know about everyone else but I like Google’s new, all blue icon more than Google’s previous red, blue, green, and yellow one. To me this new icon is more “Googley” than the previous one. Do you agree? There is a comments section for you to let us know.

Related Posts