Google Logos throughout History

Since the inception of Google in 1997, it has been the search engine providing millions of people answers to their queries. Through the years, it has progressed in its service and in design. It was at first, a university startup, which then advanced to functioning at a garage which belonged to Susan Wojcicki in California. This then turned into a corporation when Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun microsystems, gave a funding of $100,000 to Google and the rest is history; since then Google has emerged as the biggest search engine present on the internet. It has access to millions of websites to provide you with the best of results.

Just as the site’s search span has changed, so has its logo. Google’s original logo has been a totally different design from the one we know today. A lot has changed, but one thing which has remained constant is that Google has always used a variety of colors. The colors have changed overtime but you will always find the logo to be of varying colors and unique customized logo design.

1997:

When Google became a registered corporation, it had to be represented by a logo; the first logo was quite playful. It had bold hues of colors red, blue and green. The font writing style was stretched and had bold outlines. The letters in the logo were not in perfect harmony with each other and had a wavy effect. However, Google was not the odd one in adopting this design; it was the trend for many logos at the time – Windows95, Pepsi, and Yahoo to name a few.

1998:

The logo changed tremendously but kept its diversity in color. It had the same color palette as the original but had slightly different tones and the colors became a little dull. The name appeared to be in a straight line as opposed to the wavy effect it had previously. A slight drop shadow was added to the whole logo to induce a touch of dimension. Nonetheless, the logo’s look remained playful due to its font style.

1998:

It once again changed the logo, by rearranging the colors in the logo. It also added an exclamation mark at the end of the logo. The font and the styling of the logo remained unchanged.Bold letters with a hard outline or a shadow were a popular trend in 1998 with McDonalds and LEGO leading the trend.

1999:

In 1999,Google changed its logo to something that will last them for more than 10 years. The colors remained the same for the logo with a slightly darker tinge. But the logo characters became slimmer and a gradient was added to each letter which gave an overall glossy look to the logo. Its outlines became less visible and the shadow effect became more prominent. This time, however, the shadow was beneath the letters instead of being just beside the letters. The “e” became slanted to the left but remained in the same straight line as the other fonts adding a playful feel to the whole logo.

2010:

In 2010, Google changed its logo for the better, and to go along with the logo trend of the day, it removed the shadow from its letters completely. It had a hint of outline in its letters which were barely visible in the first glance. The writing style and positioning of the letters remained constant and no changes were made.google logo history

2013:

The logo yet again went through a drastic change to get on top of the logo trends for the time. There were no shadows as the previous logo, but it also removed any outlines as well, which meant that the logo went flat with no dimension added to it. The writing script did not change but the colors became smoother with no glossy effect. This was done so that the logo looked a lot simpler and to stick to the “less is more” effect.google logo history

2015:

The letters in the logo became bolder with rounder edges. The colors became brighter and lighter than before. The letters became smoother and changed its font style. The writing style had not been changed for over ten years and this change meant that Google really wanted to move on from its classic font. The “e” in the font became a little less slanting, with its edge cut short. At the same time its counterpart was introduced which was helpful in android applications. It was “G” with all the colors used in the word “Google”. The font of the “G” remained the same as the other logo.google logo history

No matter what changes are made in the future logos by Google, one thing that can be expected is that Google will stick to its playful and colorful feel. There is very little chance that Google would ever go for a logo that has the same color in all the letters. Similarly, there is no denying that Google likes to have fun with their logos which could result in something with even brighter color or more fun fonts in the future logos.