Google desperately trying to appear like an ‘underdog’
Written on May 31, 2008 – 12:31 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Some things in life seem so unimportant, yet when they change you’ll immediately notice it. An example: have you ever changed the position of your office litter bin? If you have ever did so, you probably remember you threw your garbage on the ground - on the exact place where your litter bin used to stand. Well, same goes for the Google favicon. It’s always there, you’re likely to just ignore it, but now that it has changed, it’s such an incredibly salient little thing.
The big G has changed into a small g. And though I hate to report about minor stuff like this - in Dutch we call it belly-button staring -, I had to share this interesting thought from a Google Blogoscoped forum member with you. Tony Ruscoe is philosophizing about the meaning behind this new favicon:
“Is Google undergoing a rebranding exercise…? Maybe they’re going to be known as ’the little g’ rather than ’The Big G’ from now on…
GB blogger Philipp Lenssen adds:
Google continues to grow and grow, but one of their self-proclaimed core values is “Think and act like an underdog”.
I had never heard of this core value, yet I’m sure to keep it in mind. It puts the whole Google strategy in another perspective. Maybe they have even lost the European Gmail case deliberately to appear like the poor underdog (insert wink smiley here).
One thing if for sure though, the more traction your service has, the more people talk about those minor changes. During The Next Web Conference, Digg founder Kevin Rose expressed the wish to have a small number of users again. So he could make radical changes to his social bookmarking service more easily. I see what he means, as only changing your favicon can be good for 276 blogposts with hundreds of comments.
I hope you like that post!
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
