A favicon is a small logo that appears in your browser’s address bar or tab, and the bookmarks/favorites drop-down menu.

Here’s this year’s new multi-color version:

Google blogged about how they came to the new favicon here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/googles-new-favicon.html

Here’s the original (still seen in the Firefox toolbar search box):

The first change was last year’s little ‘g’:

I still think last year’s change was a nice idea. The font has a fun feel to it, but they didn’t match it with the same blue that’s found in the Google logo, for some reason.
The funny thing is, when you turn the new favicon 90 degrees, the background colors match up in the same sequence as the Windows logo colors.

I’m surprised no one at Google noticed this, if they did, they didn’t care.

It’s odd to me that they solicited users for ideas on what Google branding should be. Even though a favicon isn’t a large branding effort, it is for a company so associated with the web. I did find myself doing a double take when I noticed it yesterday, wondering if I was at the right site. That 3-5 second hesitation that I felt was all you need to know about how important brand identity is. Usually companies change brand identity because they want to capture new attention or need a fresh look for a new age. You can’t be too careful about alerting users to new iconography, though, especially when security alerts can be displayed in the same area of a browser (like Firefox 3 does).

Even something as small as a 16-pixel image can give the user a small concern, and no company wants that to happen.

Update: Looks like the blog Brand New picked up the story. Another blog also mentions similarities with AVG’s favicon.

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