Spot the Difference: Did Google Really Change Its Logo?

Did you notice any changes in Google's logo last week? If not, then don't be surprised. Google did get itself a "new" logo, but the change is so minor that it almost seems accidental. Google appears to have slightly moved the letters 'g' and 'l' as part of its redesign.

We've made a gif image that highlights the change, before and after, which can be seen above. Take a look to see if you can spot the difference.

As you can see, the small 'g' seems to have moved one pixel to the right and 'l' one pixel down and another pixel to the right. We wonder just what Google hopes to have achieved with the redesign - is it just a practical joke to see if users can spot the difference, or if it was correcting a stylistic mistake it had originally made.

Google has been using its logo as the canvas to commemorate events deemed worthy of global attention, with its rather interesting Google doodles that can be either interactive, or static, such as the most recent one for American biologist Rachel Louise Carson, and another for palaeontologist Mary Anning. A recent interactive one was to mark the invention of Rubik's cube.

If you're looking for actual redesigns, Google's biggest revamp to its homepage occurred around the same time it launched Google+, in mid-2011. The company had then said, "Constant revision and improvement is part of our overarching philosophy," and described the new Google homepage to feature a smaller logo and links moved to the top and bottom edges of the browser for a cleaner look.

Google's last major redesigns for its other web services include when it revamped Gmail last year, adding a tabbed interface, as well as YouTube, with its redesigned comments feed. YouTube's biggest redesign was back in December 2012, and the web property has been only slightly tweaked since then.

So, while it's not clear why Google edited its logo last week, if you can think of a reason for this minor change, do speak up in the comments section below.