Official: Google unveils its new logo

After a few weeks of confusion, with Google's new logo (above) accidentally being released into the wild, the search giant has finally showed its cards, officially rolling it out on its homepage.

In tandem with the trend for flat design, the shadows of the old logo (below) have been flattened, which Google says makes it more consistent with the current user interface.

However, Google cannot accused of making a knee-jerk reaction to the flat design trend - as this 'new' logo has actually been in use on internal company documents for years, such as this PDF from 2010.

The search giant announced the changes in this blog post, saying: "As part of this design, we've also refined the color palette and letter shapes of the Google logo. We'll be rolling out this update across most Google products over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out and let us know your thoughts."

The new logo is being accompanied by a new-look top nav bar:

Google products such as GMail, YouTube and Maps are now accessible under a new app launcher: the nine-dot grid icon, located at the top right of the screen:

"Regardless of your routine, getting around Google should be seamless, and once you're inside an app, you don't want any distractions," says Google. "So we're introducing an updated Google bar that streamlines your experience across products and devices."

With fresh looks for both the Yahoo logo and Bing logo recently, not to mention Apple jettisoning skeuomorphism in iOS7 it seems that shadows are definitely out of fashion. For those who miss a sense of depth to their search logo, here's a look back at some of Google's chunkier past logos...

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What do you think of Google's new logo design? Let us know in the comments box below!