Google

Google is an American internet-technology company based in Mountain View, California. Founded as a search engine, Google focuses on developing everyday technologies for the consumer, ranging from browsers to smartphones to video uploading services. As the largest subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google has an international presence in the technology market, being known by billions.
==BackRub==
===1996–1997===
Google was originally launched as BackRub in 1996.
==Google==
===1997–1998===
BackRub was renamed to Google in 1997. This logo was used during Google's developing stage at Stanford University, but Google wasn't an official company yet.
===1998===
In July 1998, the logo's color scheme was finalized, with the uppercase "G" and the "l" in green, the first "o" and the "e" in red, the second "o" in yellow, and the lowercase "g" in blue, and the logo started using a new font known as Baskerville Bold. This logo was created using the free graphics program GIMP. This logo, however, was very short-lived and would be replaced within the same year.
===1998–1999===
On September 4, 1998, the uppercase "G" at the beginning of the wordmark was colored blue, the logo is a bit smaller, the logo is now floating instead of indented in, the letters now have different hues and are more rounded, and an exclamation point was added at the end of the wordmark, possibly to mimic the Yahoo! logo.
This logo appears as an easter egg if you search "Google in 1998", complete with the old interface from the said year, save the bottom page numbers, as they use the letters from the next logo. For the color scheme, the company used primary colors for all the letters, except for the green "l", which is a secondary color. This "brought back the idea that Google doesn't follow the rules".
===1999–2010===
On May 31, 1999, Google introduced a new logo designed by Ruth Kedar. A new typeface, Catull, replaced Berthold Baskerville as the font for the logo, and the exclamation point was removed. This remained the basis for the logo until August 31, 2015, and is arguably the most familiar and popular logo on the Internet, due to it lasting for 11 years.
===2010–2013===
The first change to the Google logo in 11 years was first previewed in November of 2009, and was officially launched on May 6, 2010. It utilizes an identical typeface to the previous logo, but the "o" is distinctly more orange-colored in place of the previously more yellowish "o", as well as a much more subtle shadow rendered in a different shading style, and brighter lettering.
===2013–2015===
The logo was given a two-dimensional effect to blend in with Google's most recent products, also foreshadowing the introduction of the Material Design language the following year. This logo was first introduced on September 19, 2013, but was previewed a week prior. Some subtle differences include serifs with straightened acute angles on the uppercase "G," a straighter "l", a straighter angle on the lowercase "g" and a connected horizontal bar on the "e". The old 2010 Google logo remained in use on some pages and services, such as Google Doodles, Google Finance, Google Sites, Google News, Google AdWords, Gmail and Google Map Maker for a period of time. This logo is still used on older versions of devices.
===2015–present===
On September 1, 2015, Google introduced a new logo with an entirely new font for the first time in 16 years. Another notable change to the wordmark was that the lower-case 'g' is now single-story opposed to Catull's double-story approach. It has a different color palette and the gradients were dropped from the logo. Like before, the previous logo was still used for some time on certain pages, including Google Play, before it followed up with this logo.
The redesign was mainly influenced by a trend with technology companies simplifying their logos to make them more recognizable on the growing number of electronic devices which use their services. With this redesign, a new typeface called Product Sans was introduced as the font for the logo to be used on Google Apps, a refresh of the green, yellow and red colors used on the wordmark to better contrast each other, and a smaller image size change from 14,000 bytes to 302 bytes to suite low bandwidth areas (a size-optimized version known as Google Sans was later created in 2018). Additionally, this redesign likely pertains to the then-recent launch of Alphabet Inc. a few weeks prior, whose logo carries relatively the same font as this logo.
Like the original logos, the "e" in the logo is tilted (as emphasized by the nudge it's given in the Google Doodle and intro video) as a reminder that Google "will always be an unconventional company". The new logo is also accompanied by a new favicon, changed from a lowercase "g" to an uppercase "G" (which was also used in the Google favicon from 1999-2008) sporting the colors of the main wordmark. Another new branding asset introduced with the rebrand is a set of circles colored with the colors of the wordmark which act as a method of communicating with the user in Google's search app.
==References==
*Google Official Blog - Google's Look, Evolved
*Google Design - Evolving the Google Identity
==External links==
Category:Google
Category:Alphabet Inc.
Category:Open Handset Alliance
Category:Technology
Category:Internet
Category:Websites
Category:Search engines
Category:Software
Category:Mobile phone manufacturers
Category:Technology companies
Category:Internet companies of the United States
Category:United States
Category:Mountain View, California
Category:California
Category:International
Category:1990s
Category:1996
Category:1997