So Google just “upgraded” its logo, by taking all the pretty serifs off and making the current logo look like something out of a cheap children’s chapter book. Any subtlety it used to have is gone. I am surprised they kept the colors. “Upgrades” like this drive me nuts. Microsoft Word “upgrades” in a similar manner, taking all the useful things I use constantly and hiding them in a different menu or behind a ruler I would never think to use, something that automatically generates, for example, a memo. Why on God’s green Earth would I ever need to automatically generate a memo? Nobody even uses memos anymore, not since the invention of email. But this is the global corporate world for you. Rather than sticking with something that works well, we have to change it up so you buy a new one that won’t work nearly half as well and takes too much work to learn.

And if you think all this is just my opinion, it turns out that Sarah Larson from The New Yorker agrees with me. “In streamlining its logo, Google took something we trusted and filed off its dignity. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY”