I’m not sure why I’m taking this so seriously, but I’m relieved to see that Google has finally dressed up its home page with a special logo to mark its tenth anniversary. This one’s kinda clever, since it’s based on the original, fatter, cruder version of the Googe logo:

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..as used on the site back in 1998:

The return of the old logo, with exclamation point, reminds me of a fact that’s so obvious it’s easy to forget: Google gave its company a name that was almost explicitly inspired by Yahoo, which had an exclamation point first and retains it to this day. I’m not sure when Google lost its one, but it was presumably whacked in part to make sure that Google and its branding didn’t come off as an imitation of Yahoo.

Here’s a brief post at the Google blog on the celebratory logo. And here’s a gallery of special Google logos from over the years.

Still mysterious: Whether there’s any particular reason why the logo popped up now. (Most of the rest of the Google-watching Web celebrated the company’s birthday early in September.)

[UPDATE: Search Engine Roundtable explains everything–historically, Google has marked its birthday on either September 7th or September 27th; it all depends on when people feel like having cake…)

 
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