To me this screams AR/VR focus in the next versions, I think they want to go after Apple's Vision Pro and do kind of like they did a few years ago when they brought some depth to the MacOS icons
GUIs swing back and forth between 3D and flat ever since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 4 for Windows 95 which introduced flat GUI toolbars. That watercolor Office release had the look planned for WinXP but Apple released Mac OS X with its (for that time) super realistic 3D icons and GUI widgets and Microsoft wanted to counter that. In fact, most such changes were initiated by Apple and were never about functionality.
It is my understanding that the "bugdroid" was not designed to be Android's official logo, the artist released it under a Creative Commons license, and Alphabet has adopted it as a mascot. Even if Google deprecates its use, it's still out there.
Don't see why they couldn't just spew iterative inclusive designs over the 2D one, this is kind of badly animated and has a 00s vibe to the concept. The disco ball-skinned and spiky mohawk examples are downright repulsive designs
Whoa! Let's watch our word choice! Google doesn't abort things!
They keep them alive for 9 months and then will unceremoniously dump the corpse into a nearby river. Their PMs don't see the fun in killing something unless it's already been adopted by consumers.
They basically capitalized the A in Android lmao. I didn't even know they officially uncapitalized it in 2019. Realistically the font change isn't all that different and I don't think many will care about that as much as us nerds do.