Could the purple logo to the right represent a new Yahoo branding initiative? Or just a photoshop hit job?
Ben Sweat, a product manager at Snap, claims to have spotted it at the top of the Yahoo homepage in Firefox 3 this morning (see shot below). But when he tried to replicate the logo in Internet Explorer, it was gone. Our attempts to load the new logo, in either Firefox or IE, were also unsuccessful.
This is likely what’s called a “bucket test,” where a small percentage of users see a new feature or, in this case, design change. Let us know if you’ve seen it as well.
Maybe (just maybe) we’ll hear more in this afternoon’s Yahoo/Google joint announcement. Perhaps some kind of favicon partnership is in the works…
Update: Others are seeing this too.
Update 2: It looks like several variants are cropping up for visitors to Yahoo’s homepage. Ike in our comments points to the one below (originally posted here).
that sucks
woot?
How can a company that owns Flickr have such bad taste with their flagship brand? I never liked the old logo that much, but this new one makes it look like a classic. Maybe this yet another poison pill to make sure that no ones wants to buy them?
I like it. Always found it weird that the ‘blood’ of Yahoo! runs purple yet the logo is red. A Yahoo! reception is ALWAYS purple!
They need some more imagination!
just saw it myself… new logo, old favicon.
When your business is failing and you can’t fix it, then change your logo to create the illusion that you’re making progress.
It really reminds me of the lettering used by Disney for Lilo & Stitch: those animated aliens who live in Hawaii …
Ben Sweat used to work at Yahoo!
i saw it, and yeah, looks classic. but it also matches the they’re sprinkling around the new site…
its part of their ‘jobs’ advertisements…
I had been wondering how Jerry Yang was going to deliver to shareholders after he botched the Microsoft negotiations. Now we know! The new purple logo should send Yahoo shares to, oh I don’t know, a thousand dollars per share? Maybe more? I feel badly for Yang when Icahn gets ahold of him. This just proves that Yahoo is fresh out of ideas.
I can see it using Firefox3 but not IE.
I’ve seen the logo too.. It only shows up in Firefox for me, but not in Yahoo. You only know to look for it thou if someone told you since its just a color change.
tech crunch is really going down the shitter.
I like the red one. Why change?
I like it. I just opened up yahoo.com and there it was. Odd timing.
Harry “where have all the serifs gone…or…I killed the serifs but I didn’t keep the red color” Wang
(dumb, I know)
http://l.yimg.c.../sp/an_logo.gif
Harry “Purple Gurple” Wang
Purple? What got into yahoo?
I saw it yesterday! It scared me!
yeah right boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!o.k
No offense, but this barely seems worthy enough to get a mention on anyone’s blog let alone TechCrunch. More than just a color and font change is going to be needed to create a better Yahoo!, sorry.
DAMN … And I HATE Purple! Is this all the originality they have to spruce things up?
purple is gross.. and whats with the TC bashing? its just one of many posts. some are really important, some are trivial, but since space is more or less unlimited, why not publish all you can? =\
I saw the exact new purple logo at around 8pm 6/11 on the Yahoo! top level home page.
I think the ‘new’ logo has been in a couple of their mobile beta’s for a few months if memory serves me right?
http://www.jamesmarkey.co.uk
http://www.tayl...mesmarkey.co.uk
I wonder if this means that they will go back to using their old purple car? http://www.flic...shawk/44951271/
Well, well. Is this the find of the century or what? We are talking about the color of a font here people. I think a review of one’s priorities is in order. Get away from your machines for 5 minutes. Go and find some roses, and then smell them. And then report back.
Purple has always been the official color for Yahoo! I always wondered why their logo was nearly red. I give the font face and color 2 thumbs up.
http://l.yimg.c...i/ww/beta/y.gif
http://l.yimg.c.../ww/beta/y1.gif
http://l.yimg.c.../ww/beta/y2.gif
http://l.yimg.c.../ww/beta/y3.gif
And than it stops
I’m seeing a different logo, it looks like the old one, but it’s purple too!
http://img66.im...ntallazoqg8.png
The existing Yahoo! logo is immature — always has been, from the day it was introduced to a world that had no idea what a ‘yahoo’ was. Amazing to me that the company never updated it to reflect its more important stature in the online universe. What we see every day at every Y! site is kid-like, dinky, ineffectively executed. But the variants posted here aren’t much better, still not up to snuff for a major, worldwide brand. Yahoo! needs a top-flight logo designer to produce something fresh and fitting. Purple would be OK. But more important than the color is the typography. Let’s keep trying, Yahoo! (Thanks from a long-time user.)
This may just be a brilliant scheme by someone at Yahoo!–This logo only comes up once and a while, so now they have lots of people going to their homepage, hitting refresh over and over. That’ll inflate their pageviews statistic.
By playing with the logo file name, youu can actually see the Yahoo revisions of logos
y3.gif y2.gif y1.gif
Here’s a pic showing the revisions that I’ve found http://www.simp...t.com/p/mdi4ntu
Looks like they are simply “bucket testing” different designs. Show different designs to a fraction of people and see what happens to the page. I’d be shocked if there’s any real impact to the page that’s measurable – this is more of an emotional thing – I expect they are running surveys somewhere too to see if people feel the page is “fast”, “trustworthy”, etc.
As far as purple, they’ve wanted to change to purple for years – but red always looked better online than purple – purple often looked too drab. Who knows why they are trying a completely different type – yahoo’s jaggies are one of the most recognizable brand attributes.
Someone told Jerry that red is a bad color (too much bleeding at Yahoo), and he needs to change it for his fortunes to change. You know, Jerry could use some lucky charm just about now.
“since space is more or less unlimited, why not publish all you can”
http://en.wikip...-to-noise_ratio
I was looking in Yahoo! search for the Google logo. I was confused by the importance of the discussion.
Just spotted the purple variation of the existing serif logo on the wordpress.org homepage too under their users list. I had a quick look around some of the main yahoo properties, search, mail etc. and couldn’t see the new variation in use anywhere else but I think it sits more comfortably with the rest of their brand.
It’s a subtle change but with a brand the size of Yahoo’s and the recognition that goes along with it any change is bound to be subtle.
Yahoo uses the same purple logo on the Yahoo to go mobile app
The allegedly “new” Yahoo logo is exactly the same as the old logo, except it’s red instead of purple, and it’s sans serif instead of serif?
If this is a “change” in logo, I sure hope they didn’t pay more than $3.00 or $4.00 dollars for it.
Wonder if it will end up like this: http://googlefo...=Create+logo%21
A someone interested in typography, design, and brand awareness, I can say this is an important blog post, thanks for informing me, TechCrunch.
And I quite like the logo. It’s all part of the rebranding process, both graphically and strategically, and I for one like it a lot.
I like it!
Its about time they updated!
This logo looks awful.
This is a more appropriate contemporary look for Yahoo! Take a look http://www.faction7.com/
Purple is a horrible logo color.
and yeah the yahoo infinity logo is great
I love the new Yahoo! logo! It’s beautiful!
Who uses yahoo???
I definitely think it is modern. I am glad it is not Web 2.00eey. It might take some time to grow on me – but now, I actually like it a lot better than the old one.
think the logo is missing the small ‘g’ that should now be in front of it …
The typographical treatment by faction7 is very nice. A smart start if we’re going to begin playing around with the (quite dreadful) existing mark But wouldn’t the company insist on keeping its iconic exclamation mark?! For sure, I’d say. That would need to be integrated into any new logo.