Google has admitted that a change in logo and its favicon to a small "g" is to allow the company to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices.

In a post on the company’s website, the search engine answered the question on why after eight and a half years it had changed from a capital "G" to a lowercase "g".

According to the company the change in character, which happened earlier in the month, was "rigorous and interesting" with over 300 permutations.

"It was much harder than we thought at first. We wanted something distinctive and noticeable, so we aimed toward transparency or semi-transparency, so the image would have a more distinctive noticeable shape than just a block. We wanted something that embraced the colorfulness of the logo, yet wouldn't date itself", said Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience, and Micheal Lopez, Web Designer

However, strangely Google has also admitted that this is more a work in progress rather than a final version, something unheard of in the realms of corporate identity and branding.