Google is a billion dollar corporation that has become omnipresent on the web. It has become a synonym to search and it’s e-mail service has made web based e-mail a useful option.

We’re all familiar with the Google logo and the several oooo’s that are part of search results. You can read more about the evolution of Google’s logo at this Wired Magazine article.

Almost all recent web browsers come with a neat little thing that displays a icon right next to a website address. These are called favicons. It’s another opportunity for websites to distinguish themselves from others. Favicons are small and most people are used by now to see them as a visual representation of a website.

It’s in the human nature to associate images to objects, places and businesses. That’s why almost all companies have their own logo that’s created to portrait in some manner what the company offers. Like with any other image, humans store them easily inside their brains and the association between the logo and a company lasts a lifetime.

Changing a logo, breaks the association that’s been established in consumers brains and is not a decision to be made lightly. Rebranding has been studied by marketeers and academics for decades without any conclusive answers. But one thing we can all be sure of, humans have a built in resistance to change.

I’ve covered three different topics in this post, which aren’t apparently connected in any way, but most of you already know what I’m talking about. Google has changed it’s favicon.

Now there’s different favicons for the several different ways you can reach Google.

I’ll be honest, I hate the little G. It’s odd, it’s blue, and I just hate it.

Fortunately I’m not alone. After the official announcement at Google’s blog there’s been an huge uproar about this sudden change.

It’s been big enough to spawn the creation of a Greasemonkey script that replaces the old favicon back and which has been installed more than a thousand times in just six days.

If you don’t like the new favicon you can submit an idea for a new one to Google. All of the sudden it struck me, is this a crowd sourcing experience? Let’s create a new icon that people will hate just to see how many different suggestions we get? I’ve seen weirder stuff happening.

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