Google Maps Logo History: A Before-and-After Evaluation

The short answer

The best-known change in the Google Maps logo is the move from a folded paper map with a red location pin to a single pin in Google's four brand colors. Google introduced the four-color pin in February 2020, when it marked the service's 15th anniversary. Google Maps itself launched in February 2005. This article covers the app icon and product mark, not the broader Google wordmark. It compares the earlier folded-map design with the current pin and explains what the change means for anyone looking for or preparing vector versions of the mark.

Evidence gap: no source documents were supplied for this article. Only the 2005 launch and the 2020 pin redesign are given dates here, because both are tied to Google's own public announcements. Exact dates for earlier icon revisions, and the names of individual designers, are not established here. Google presents its product icons as in-house work and does not credit a single author.

Before: the folded-map era

In the years before 2020, the Maps icon showed a stylized folded map with a red pin on top. The map was split into angled panels, which suggested paper folds and a slight sense of depth. The pin was the main focal point, and the map panels carried most of the color. Over its life the icon went through several refinements, including flatter treatments that matched Google's wider shift away from glossy, dimensional icons. The exact sequence and dates of those refinements are not documented in this article's evidence.

Interpretation: the folded map spelled out the product literally, with a map and a marker on it. That made it easy to recognize, but it also meant more shapes, more color regions and more detail to render at small sizes.

After: the four-color pin

The 2020 icon drops the map entirely. What remains is the location pin, the element most closely tied to the product. The pin is divided into blue, green, yellow and red segments, the same palette Google uses across its brand. Later in 2020, Google redesigned the Gmail, Calendar, Drive and other Workspace icons in a similar four-color style. That puts the Maps change within a family-wide system rather than making it a one-off.

Feature | Before (folded map + pin) | After (four-color pin)

Core symbol | Map sheet with a marker | Marker alone

Color logic | Map panels in several colors, red pin | Pin split into Google's four brand colors

Implied depth | Folds suggest a physical object | Flat, symbolic shape

Shape count | Multiple panels plus the pin | One silhouette with color segments

Family consistency | Product-specific look | Matches the 2020 Google app icon system

Evaluating the change

The points below are editorial judgments, not documented design rationale.

• Gains: a single silhouette tends to stay legible at very small sizes, and the pin carries the meaning of location without needing the map behind it.
• Gains: shared colors and geometry make Maps read clearly as part of the Google family next to its sibling apps.
• Costs: because several Google icons now use the same four colors, some users and commentators have said the apps look less distinct from one another on a home screen.
• Costs: the literal map reference is gone, so recognition now depends more on the pin shape alone.

How the pin is built as vector artwork

Interpretation based on the visible design: a location pin is usually built as a circle merged with a tapered point, often with a circular cutout or inner dot. In the current Maps icon, that outline is split into flat color regions instead of using gradients or perspective. As vector artwork, this makes the mark relatively simple: a small number of closed shapes with solid fills. The earlier folded-map icon needed more separate panels to suggest the folds.

Construction is one question and what a file actually contains is another. A file labeled SVG, EPS, AI or PDF is not guaranteed to hold editable paths. Some files in these formats only wrap an embedded raster image, and many logo download pages show raster previews of artwork that may or may not exist as vectors. The only reliable check is to open the file in a vector editor and confirm that the shapes are made of paths with anchor points, not a placed bitmap. Also look for traced copies. Unofficial redraws can drift from the official proportions and colors.

Downloading versus using the logo

Being able to download the Google Maps logo does not give you permission to change it or use it freely. The pin and its colors are Google trademarks. Google publishes brand and permissions guidelines covering how its marks and product icons may appear, and those rules typically restrict recoloring, distortion, animation or combining the mark with other artwork. Any typeface in surrounding Google branding has its own license. If you need the mark for an editorial piece, a partner integration or a "find us on Maps" button, check Google's current guidelines for that specific use rather than relying on a third-party download site's terms.

Gaps in this history

• Exact launch dates for each pre-2020 icon variant are not confirmed here.
• No attributable record of individual designers or written design intent was supplied; statements about intent above are labeled as interpretation.
• No official vector file was examined, so path counts, exact color values and proportions are not stated.