Google’s New FavIcon

Not sure how many of you have noticed Google’s new favorite icon (aka favicon or shortcut icon):

Google's FavIcon

It’s basically the little icon that shows up next to your address bar or the icon that gets saved when you try to bookmark a page. Anyway, when I first saw it a couple days ago, I was confused which site actually uses that icon and when I realized it was Google, I was even more confused. It used to be a capital ‘G’ on white background with and blue border. Now, it’s the little ‘g’ in the 4th letter of Google. What confused me was that it was in on a gray background, and due to the style of the ‘g’, it reminded me of some soap or shampoo logo.

Update: It turns out it’s only gray because it’s using transparency. On a gray background, it’s gray. On a white background, it’s white. The tabs on Firefox by default are gray, hence:

Google's FavIcon

Update #2: Thanks to RayAlome for pointing me to the official Google blog entry of their new favicon: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish