Google are certainly on a mission to shake things up at the moment. From their initial move of creating “Alphabet“, the new holding company, right through to the launch of their refreshed logo and icons for all Google properties. But I guess the real question is, “why?”.
Alphabet
Essentially Alphabet is the new holding company for a whole host of companies, the largest of which is Google. In fact, the new structure has even trimmed Google down a bit. At its core, this is a strategy to do what Larry Page and Sergey Brin have always done, challenge the status quo and do business differently.
As Larry page put it:
Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We’ll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation.
This move to a slimmed down version of Google – the now hyper-focussed search giant – needed a way to convey this message to the masses. Granted anyone in the industry would have read the announcement blog post, or seen the news headlines, but there needed to be a more visual depiction of the change.
In short this opened the door for a new look Google visual identity.
HKLM’s Gary Harwood had the following to say about the new Google Visual Identity:
The new Google logo is cleaner, bolder & more sophisticated than its predecessor. It does however feel more corporate & more safe. I would have liked to have seen a more playful and more thought provoking evolution of the identity. A great logo steals a piece of your mind, has a visual barb and makes you look twice. This logo does none of that.
Love it or hate it, the new Google identity is certainly here to stay and if nothing else has pushed the message home that Google is and will always be an evolving entity that pushes back on “normal” and strongly resists average.
What are your thoughts on the new Google evolution?