Google’s Favicon
Sunday, June 1st, 2008Google, like the link is even necessary, has apparently changed their favicon suddenly and shockingly, and it’s a rather interesting look into the power of branding.
A favicon is a 16×16 pixel image saved in a special icon format with the extension .ico. When uploaded to a site, typically the main directory, it will be shown in browser address bars and tabs and becomes a brandable mark for that site. Typically a company would use their logo, or part of it, to reinforce the logo brand such as what Google has done. For ages, Google’s favicon has been nearly as iconic as their logo. The trademark uppercase G from their logo with a colored border.
As Ionut Alex Chitu notes on the GoogleSystem Blog (not affiliated with Google):
Google’s new favicon is less cheerful and comforting, but it makes a lot of sense: the small g is a symbol for infinity (∞). A googol (10100) is just a poor approximation for the huge amount of information that needs to be indexed, organized and made useful by Google.
Will this hurt Google? No, probably not.
In fact it will probably be some great publicity for a time as people sit up and take notice, writing blog posts such as this one to reinforce the Google brand. It goes to show that there is a power to branding beyond the subliminal reinforcement. When you’re as big as Google, you can mess with it, and by doing so you tug on that reinforcement of the brand and get into peoples heads - as well as getting some great, cheap advertising out of the deal.
Yes, when you are as big as Google you can nonchalantly mess with people’s heads. That is the power of a good brand.
Just don’t make the mistake Coca Cola did and change your formula. That, definately, is a recipe for disaster.
Update: Google has finally posted a public message about their new favicon on their official Blog. The includes a nice sampling of the designs they considered for the new favicon as well as an allusion to Dr. Suess.
