Google has a new logo

Google is introducing a new logo today. Just a month after unveiling a major restructuringof the company, Google is updating its image, too. The new Google logo is still a wordmark, but it’s now using a sans-serif typeface, making it look a lot more modern and playful. The colors are also softer than they used to be. The logo bears a bit more resemblance to the logo of Google’s new parent company, Alphabet, as well. Alphabet’s wordmark has a similarly unadorned look, and this update makes the two companies’ design language fall more inline.

As Google’s video introducing the new logo notes, the wordmark has been evolving ever since it was created in 1998. But this is easily its biggest change since 1999, when Google first cleaned up the lettering and settled on its four colors. Since then, the logo has just been flattened out more and more, with today’s update representing a huge leap. In addition to changing up the wordmark, Google is also changing the tiny “g” logo that you see on browser tabs. It’s now going to be an uppercase “G” that’s striped in all four of Google’s colors. Google says that the new design will be rolling out across all of its products soon — in fact, it’s already on Google’s homepage, with a cute animation that wipes away the old logo and draws in the new one.

So why did Google decide to make the change? In a blog post, Google discusses how much technology has changed how we interact with its products and with the internet at large. It doesn’t really settle on a specific reason that a redesign was needed, but it says that this logo should better reflect the reality that Google is no longer a site you visit on a desktop computer — it’s a huge collection of sites, apps, and services that you visit on PCs, Chromebooks, smartphones, and anywhere you can find a web browser. Google writes that its new logo is meant to reflect “this reality and [show] you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens.”

Making the logo look good on small screens seems to have been a major consideration. The new, simpler lettering is supposed to scale better to smaller sizes, making the wordmark more distinct and easier to read. It’s also supposed to be easier for Google to display on low-bandwidth connections: Google says that it’s made a version of its logo that’s “only 305 bytes, compared to our existing logo at ~14,000 bytes.” Given that one of new Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s big goals is to bring the internet — and Google, of course — to areas of the globe that don’t already have it, that small difference is definitely going to be an important one.

You can also see the new Google “G” beginning to appear across its services. Among the more notable is Google+, which is now represented by a big colorless version of the new G.

Google+ and YouTube are finally splitting up, but don’t delete your account yet

Google is officially divorcing Google+ profiles from its other, more popular services. Today the company published a blog post announcing that over the next few months, “a Google Account will be all you’ll need to share content, communicate with contacts, create a YouTube channel and more, all across Google.”

The decision comes several months after Google stopped forcing new users to create accounts under its social network, which has failed to become the Facebook and Twitter competitor Mountain View once hoped it would be. Google has also split successful Google+ features like Photos into stand-alone products, a strategy it says will continue. “We’re well underway putting location sharing into Hangouts and other apps, where it really belongs,” Google’s Bradley Horowitz wrote. “We think changes like these will lead to a more focused, more useful, more engaging Google+.”

THE WAY IT SHOULD BE

“Your underlying Google Account won’t be searchable or followable, unlike public Google+ profiles,” Horowitz says. “And for people who already created Google+ profiles but don’t plan to use Google+ itself, we’ll offer better options for managing and removing those public profiles.”

YouTube will be among the first big services to move away from Google+. Some of that starts today; YouTube says comments you make on its pages will no longer show up on your Google+ profile. But the ability to create a YouTube channel, upload videos, or comment without a Google+ is still months off, the company says — and it’s warning users not to remove their Google+ profiles before that day comes, since doing so will also eradicate your whole YouTube presence. “Do not do it now or you’ll delete your YouTube channel (no bueno).”

Google insists Google+ isn’t going away and will continue to provide an “interest-based social experience” for users who’ve grown to love its communities. But for everyone else, it’ll finally be much easier to walk away from Google+ in the weeks to come.

Google announces Q2 2015 earnings: $17.7 billion revenue, $3.93 billion net income

Google has just announced its Q2 2015 earnings, showing strong growth in revenues and net income for the quarter compared to last year. Total revenues for the quarter were $17.7 billion, up from $15.9 billion in 2014, and net income was $3.93 billion, up from $3.35 billion. Those numbers are strong despite heavy currency fluctuations, which dropped revenues by an estimated $1.1 billion.

Breaking down the revenues, Google’s websites contributed $12.4 billion of the revenue, up 13 percent over last year, while the “other revenues” segment — which includes the Nexus business — came out to $1.7 billion, up 17 percent year-over-year.

Paid advertisement clicks, a major part of Google’s business, were up 18 percent year-over-year- and seven percent quarter-over-quarter, while paid clicks on Google’s own websites were up 30 percent year-over-year and 10 percent quarter-over-quarter. In a continuing trend, cost per click dropped again, this time 11 percent year-over-year and 4 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Operating expenses for Q2 were $6.319 billion, which works out to 36 percent of revenues. At the end of the quarter Google held $69.78 billion in cash and cash equivalents, up from $61.2 billion last year, and its effective tax rate kept steady at 21 percent for the quarter.

On the employment side of things, Google’s total number of employees grew to 57,148, up significantly from 48,584 in the same quarter last year.