Google changed their long standing favicon (appears to the left of the address in most browsers). According to most observers, to the worse.
I agree. It looks hideous.
After that on the official Google blog we see this
You may have noticed that Google has a new favicon, the small icon you see in your browser next to the URL or in your bookmarks list. Some people have wondered why we changed our favicon -- after all, we hadn't in 8.5 years(!). The reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices.
Non sequitur. Nuff said.