Opinion BY Armin

April Fools: Google Chrome’s Broken Image Icon Heals Broken Hearts

First used in 1994 with the beta release of Netscape, the “broken image” icon has become a staple of web browsing. In this Quora question, Netscape’s original UI designer gives credit to Marsh Chamberlin of DataGlyph for creating the first, literally-iconic rendition of a shattered frame containing a sphere, pyramid, and cube. Since then, some browsers have used variations of the theme while others, like Safari, have gone with their own idea like a question mark for Apple’s own browser. Until earlier this year, Google’s Chrome browser had been using its own take on the original but one thing we know is that you can’t contain Google to the status quo. A new broken image icon has started appearing across users’ Chrome browser this year and since we’ve covered Google’s favicon, not once but twice, I thought it would be relevant to cover this minor yet significant change.

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A B-Side BY Armin

Google Developers

Originally named Google Code, Google Developers is a source for all the developers who embrace Google’s open-source platforms. Portland, OR-based Instrument designed their new identity. Explanation and further images here.

Opinion BY Armin

And the Google Played On…

Launched this month, Google Play is the successor to Android Market, Google Music, and the Google eBookstore all now in a single place with the power to sync across all your different screens in the proverbial cloud and featuring over 450,000 apps and millions of songs. With the launch came a new logo.

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A B-Side BY Armin

Dart

Introduced by Google this month, Dart is a new “programming language the company hopes will help Web application programmers overcome shortcomings of JavaScript.” Story here. Of interest: The logo, designed by Michael Nieling of Ocupop, was first sketched while sitting in the audience during the Brand New Conference this past September.

Opinion BY Armin

Chrome Loses Volume

First released for Windows XP in December of 2008, Google Chrome is a browser developed by, yes, Google. Versions for Mac OS X and Linux followed a few months later and since then Chrome has become one of the most popular browsers — 19.26% of you are reading Brand New on Chrome, in third “place” behind Safari and Firefox. Chrome’s most current stable release is version 10.0.648.134 (but you knew that, right?) and currently in development is dev version 11.0.696.12 which is not released to the public yet but for those that are taking it for an early spin they have gotten a glimpse at the new logo for Chrome. The new logo for Chrome surfaced after a new logo for Chromium — the open source version of Chrome — made its debut earlier this year.

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Opinion BY Armin

Gmail adds a Touch of Make-Up

Since its launch in early 2007 Google’s Gmail service has become one of the most popular online e-mail programs offering whale-sized storage allowing users to keep e-mails in the realm of gigabytes, whereas its competition early on allowed for mere megabytes. I tried to find the number of Gmail users but found conflicting information: It’s either 170 million users or 36 million. Either way, that’s a lot of. Earlier this week, Gmail made some changes to its log-in page as well as some tweaks to its logo.

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Opinion BY Armin

I Want My Google TV

Google TV. It’s like a pizza rolled inside a burrito. Decadent, non-stop entertainment that brings together the web and the TV in the most seamless way possible yet. Announced in May, Google TV is now a consumer reality, with Sony shipping its internet-powered televisions, Google’s software included. As well as a couple of boxes by Sony and Logitech that allow you to add Google TV to an existing television. So things are now right in the world: You can watch YouTube clips of cats playing the piano in full HD. This past August, Google TV introduced the icon for its service.

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Opinion BY Armin

An Inconvenient Drop Shadow

For a company infamous for their optimization obsessiveness where every nano-second and shade of blue is a matter of life and death, a change as radical as the one seen above must not have come easily. E-mails to Brand New spotting the new logo in the wild started coming in as early as March February and while I was hesitant to post based on a few intermittent reports, it seems now the change is official and, like all things Google, a big deal. The change to the logo comes as part of a bigger redesign of the Google search experience that started to be rolled out yesterday for users in 37 languages — although I’m sure English is one of them, my own Google remains stuck in 2009.

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