In 1998, Larry Page created a computerized version of the google letters using the free graphics program GIMP. The typeface was changed and an exclamation mark was added mimicking the Yahoo! logo.

"There were a lot of different color iterations", says Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous logo. "We ended up with the primary colors, but instead of having the pattern go in order, we put a secondary color on the L, which brought back the idea that Google doesn't follow the rules." The font Catull was used, "I was trying to find something that was both traditionally tied to the beautiful fonts in the past and also had a very current and in some ways surprising ways", says Ruth, "I really loved the way that it had these very elegant stems and ascenders and descenders and also had these Serifs that were very, very precise and I wanted something that when you looked at it, it was very clear that it’s something you haven’t seen before".

In 2010, the Google logo received its first major overhaul since May 31, 1999. The new logo was first previewed on November 8, 2009, and was officially launched on May 6, 2010. It utilises an identical typeface to the previous logo, but the "o" is distinctly more orange-colored in place of the previously more yellowish "o", as well as a much more subtle shadow rendered in a different shading style. On September 19, 2013, Google introduced a new "flat" (two-dimensional) logo with a slightly altered color palette. On May 24, 2014, the Google logo was updated, the second 'g' moved right one pixel and the 'l' moved down and right one pixel. The old 2010 Google logo remained in use on some pages, such as the Google Doodles page, for a period of time.

On September 1, 2015, Google introduced a controversial "new logo and identity family" designed to work across multiple devices. The notable difference in the logo is the change in the typeface. The colors remained the same, however, Google switched to a modern, geometric sans-serif typeface called Product Sans, created in-house at Google (and also used for the Alphabet logo).