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Google tweaks logos, embraces lowercase text

In a move straight out of former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's playbook, Google plans to roll out lowercase logos for its various products.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit
Google's new 'streamlined' logos will be arriving soon on just about all of its Web pages. Google

Google is tweaking the logos of several popular products in a bid to "streamline the user experience."

How a move to a logo with lowercase text and a uniform blue font streamlines the user experience is a bit beyond my powers of analysis, but Google's Marissa Mayer and Jamie Devine said in a blog post that at the moment Google logos for certain products are different shapes and sizes, and so moving to a consistent size, font, and style "should make it easier for you to recognize which site you are on and navigate to wherever you want to go." However, it seems a bit of a stretch to believe people visiting Google Maps weren't sure whether they were on that site or Google News because Google used different font sizes and colors in the logos.

In any event, the new logo style can currently be found on the Google Code, Google Labs, and Google Moderator sites, and will be coming to the rest of the Googleverse in due course. The new logos couldn't help but remind me of former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's fondness for lowercase text in the many e-mails sent to Yahoo employees over the past year, although that was probably unintentional.