Google Makes Its New Flat Logo And “App Launcher”

Google just got a refreshed flat logo and the black navigation bar is gone. Earlier this morning, we reported that Google’s new “App Launcher” style navigational menu was justweeks away from launch. Turns out, it is much closer to launching, as the company just made the change official.

Gone is the black bar that runs atop all of Google’s properties. It’s now been replaced with a new menu that sits next to the Share and account info. The launcher, which looks just like the app launcher on Chrome OS, brings up an App grid with your favorite Google services.

Google previously attempted to revamp the navigation bar back in 2011 by canning it in favor of a drop-down menu inside the Google logo. While the company officially announced this change, it later gave up on this idea. It’ll be interesting to see how Google’s users will react to today’s change.

With this announcement, Google is also making its new flat logo official. The new logo had already been spotted across the web for the last few weeks, but given Google’s fondness for bucket testing small changes, it wasn’t clear if this was ever going to become the official logo.

We’ll have to wait and see if Google will post a Yahoo-like explanation of the design processbehind the flatter logo, but here is what the company had to say about it so far: “As part of this design, we’ve also refined the color palette and letter shapes of the Google logo.” That’s it.