Google Logo History and Redesigns: Compare the Changes
A practical timeline of Google logo redesigns from 1998 to today, comparing wordmarks, typography, color, and version-specific details.
Contents
Define the alternatives
A Google logo comparison usually means looking at the main company wordmark over time, not every icon, favicon, or product mark. The clearest versions to compare are the 1998 original, the 1999 Catull-based wordmark, the 2010–2013 flat revision, and the 2015 Product Sans wordmark. Focus on the primary mark unless the comparison specifically covers app icons or search-page presentation.
Compare meaningful differences
The first 1998 logo used a serif treatment with an exclamation mark and a drop-shadow effect. By 1999, Google adopted a cleaner serif wordmark based on Catull, retaining the blue, red, yellow, and green letter sequence. The 2010–2013 versions removed the heavy shadow and bevel, producing a flatter look while keeping the serif letterforms. In 2015, Google replaced the serif design with the geometric sans-serif Product Sans, a higher-contrast, more compact wordmark designed for small screens.
Typography changed more dramatically than color. The core sequence of blue, red, yellow, and green has remained recognizable, but the letterforms moved from serif to sans-serif, and the earlier shadowing disappeared. The 2015 redesign also introduced the four-color G as a separate identity element.
Practical trade-offs
For a small brand reference in print, the 1999–2010 wordmark is easier to identify as a historical logo, but its fine serifs and bevel effects render less clearly at very small sizes. The 2015 mark works better in constrained interfaces and favicon-like applications because of its simpler geometry. If you are making a timeline or mockup, compare versions at the same pixel width rather than at different sizes; scaling can make an older logo look softer than it actually was.
Be careful not to treat every temporary holiday doodle or search-page experiment as an official redesign. Those variants are campaigns or special versions, not replacements of the primary wordmark.
Choose for the use case
Use the 1998 version when the point is early web-era looseness. Use the 1999–2010 wordmark when the task is about the long-running classic Google identity. Use the 2015 Product Sans mark when the comparison is about modern mobile-first branding or the current visual system. There is no single best version; the choice depends on whether the reader cares more about nostalgia, typography, or current brand guidelines.