After at Least Six Years, Google Abandons Stars and Stripes in July 4 Home-Page Design

In October 2007, amid the controversy over search giant Google’s redecorating its home-page logo for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite, the Los Angeles Times noted that (bold is mine):

The Mountain View, Calif., company bathes its logo in stars and stripes every Independence Day, but last week’s decision to honor the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch — the second “g” in Google was replaced with a drawing of the Soviet satellite — is being blasted by some conservatives.

Indeed, here are Google’s July 4 home-page logos from the past six years (2002 through 2007):

Now here is 2008, which is still up at the company’s home page as of this moment:

It’s interesting that this just happens to be the year in which presidential candidate Barack Obama has alternatively renounced the wearing of an American flag lapel pin (”at length, explaining that he no longer wears such a pin, at least in part, because of the Iraq War”) and then, after criticism, decide to start wearing one (at the time claiming that “I was never opposed to wearing flag pins”).

Thus, it’s fascinating that the company would choose this year to abandon its stars-and-stripes “bathing” or flag-showing tradition. And no, I don’t think there’s a tiny flag on the far right of the graphic, at least based on expanding that part of the graphic, as there’s not a hint of red present:

It is, at a minimum, quite convenient that the redesign occurred in an election cycle where the Obama campaign has accumulated $315,000 in individual contributions from Google employees and executives (12th highest on the list here at OpenSecrets.org; graphic is here as backup for when the data changes). The Obama individual detail of Google contributors, showing a slightly smaller total of over $308,000, starts here. By contrast, individual contributions by Google employees to the campaign of John McCain amount to $16,350.

Also, Obama has been publicly endorsed by at least two of Google’s more important executives. Last November, Andrew McLaughlin (Director, Global Public Policy and Government Affairs) and Kim Scott (AdSense Director of Online Sales and Operations) were noted as Obama endorsers.

We’ll never know whether all of this is more than a conincidence. But there’s no point in denying that it’s more than a little curious.

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UPDATE: Pre-emptive note — It would be tempting to trivialize the possibility raised here (and critics will surely do so), if it weren’t for the fact that the left (and Google is, at least based on its actions, a company dominated by leftist thought) engages in visual cleverness all the time. Witness Rush photographed entirely in black and white for this weekend’s NYT Magazine piece, and how this CNN pic gave Saddam Hussein the heroic statesman treatment on the day he was executed (the NYT, in an update at the same link, did the same thing).

UPDATE 2: Also note, I’m saying it’s “convenient” and “curious,” and did NOT say that it’s a conspiracy. Zheesh.