Last Friday, Google replaced their colourful upper-case ‘G’ icon with a more subtle lower-case ‘g’ icon. This has upset a lot of users who prefer the old one. Personally I don’t really mind but what I found interesting is that the change has really impacted my browsing. I often have 10+ tabs open at the same time in my browser and switch between them often but it wasn’t until Google changed their highly recognisable icon that I realised how much I rely on the icons to locate tabs. Every time I want to switch to a Google tab I spend several seconds scanning and re-scanning the tab bar looking for that familiar ‘G’. When I don’t find it, I start reading the tab names.
Fortunately someone has thoughtfully created a Greasemonkey script that changes the Google favicon back to the original ‘G’. On the whole I think the new lower-case ‘g’ icon looks nicer than the old one but the old one lets me work more efficiently!
Who would have thought that favicons, regarded by many as a pointless gimmick when first introduced by Microsoft in Internet Explorer 5, would end up having such an impact on our productivity?
This entry was posted by Tamlyn Rhodes on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm and is tagged with Google, icons, Usability and is posted in the category Industry News, Innovation and the Internet, Tech News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
It's the little things 
Wondered about this. It coincided with my decision to install Firefox 3 RC1 so at the time I just put it down to that. For the record, I like the old one better!
Similar Discussion: http://blogoscoped.com/forum/132365.html
I use them all the time. Once i had my bookmarks toolbar just all favicons. I would get frustrated when sites didn't have favicons because i wouldn't know what they where on the tool bar.
I really wasn't sure what to make of it either at first. I've actually found myself opening up Google again in another tab because I didn't realize that I already had it open.
Bow down to the almighty favicon lol
That threw me too.. in fact it'd not really clicked with me on a concious level at all until I read this 
Official response from a Google spokesperson:
"We recognized there was a need for a Google icon that would better work across multiple applications including web, mobile and client applications. We felt the small 'g' had many of the characteristics that best represent our brand: it's simple, playful, and unique. We will be looking to improve and enhance this icon as we move forward."
You can see some other favicon concepts on the google blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/one-fish-two-fish-red-fish-blue-fish.html
The company response is not very "user friendly". You'd think that market research would have shown that the public wouldn't like the litte "g" as much. I agree that it was more visible when trying to spot Google.
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