Does a new logo herald the launch of the new Chrome OS soon?

Google unveiled a new logo for its browser yesterday, and gone are the shiny metallic plates and the shimmering blue light in the middle. Instead, Google adopted a design which abandons the robotic look and flattens the logo into a more 2D aesthetic.

This could mean more than a simple re-design. Google has always been a brand-conscious company, and they don’t often alter designs without a reason. The Google homepage, for example, looks almost identical to its original one more than a decade ago.

Looking closer, it seems that the new Chrome logo is closely aligned with the individual app logos for Google Apps. This could be a coincidence, but could this point to a launch of Chrome OS soon? Maybe Google is simply unifying the visual aspect of its products before the launch.

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How do you refine a piece of software that everyone has been using since the Internet arrived on home computers in the mid 1990s?

The answer, as Google will tell you, is to make it smarter and slicker. Its Chrome browser, launched on Tuesday, promises to give people the information they need faster and also offer a more intuitive interface.

An answer to Microsoft’s recently announced Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, it has some of Microsoft’s nifty new features, as well as the appeal of being “alternative”.
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