Finally, google has written an official blog post about its new favicon. Apparently, what you are seeing is not the final version - google's design team is still working towards a more unified set of icons for the brand.
Favicon iterations
[tags]design, google, favicon[/tags]
Wow, I hadn’t noticed the amount of variation they had played with for the favicon.
Makes me feel a bit guilty for not noticing it myself.
Oh well, at least it is an ongoing redesign that we get to see develop over time.