I went to google today & saw an odd icon on my browser tab:

I think it looks awful.

It took me a long time before I realised its actually a white “g” on a colourful vomit background.

OK, personal artistic feelings aside, I also don’t like it from a marketing and branding point of view.

Most good marketing people know that you need to maintain consistency with your logo, and use it everywhere you can.

Mcdonalds is a good example. They use the golden arches everywhere (including their favicon).

I’ve tried the same with the Computer Aid logo (black name on a yellow oval, with a red oval border). For my favicon, I decided to only use the letters “CA”, since anything else would have been unreadable.

If I were google (don’t we all wish for that!), I would make use of their logo from their home page… but since its too big to fit into a favicon, then the first letter (maybe with a circle around it), would be the next best thing.

So, I would use the letter “G” (uppercase) as the favicon…

Hold on!

Thats what Google originally had as a favicon!

So, it looks like the new icon fails on a few fronts.

Even the slightly older small “g” failed, as they picked the second “g” from their name… not the first.

What do you think?