Is my laptop glitching?
Last night at around 9pm GMT vibrations could be felt on the surface of the internet’s biggest search engine. Google had thrown a small number of internet doomscrollers into a tiz by turning their entire aesthetic on its head. That’s right folks, they changed their font.
Or so it seemed.
Back in 2018 the world had to adapt to the almighty change that was, Google changing their font from Arial to the new and exclusive Google Sans; a change that did not go unnoticed. However, after users got over the initial shock to the (intercom) system it was wholly embraced. It did make sense for the leading search engine on the planet to have its own branded font.
*imagines Google sporting a snazzy times new roman*
*immediately erases the image from their mind forever*
Don’t get us wrong, we know this isn’t breaking news – it’s no fly drunk off the fumes of Mike Pence’s hairspray. But the backlash for this font fiasco was an interesting watch for anyone bored and scrolling their life away on Twitter last night.
The outrage set in early on with the suspected new font causing trouble for those short of sight. This font was thinner, lighter, greyer? The new font seemed to blend into Google’s pristine white background, making it extremely user-unfriendly.
One user seemed to find the whole experience rather distressing, calling the giant out on their “font-noncery” and requesting the tech giant put a stop to it “immediately”. *insert angry face*
As Tweeters started coming to terms with the so-called change, some began to question the conglomerates decision, demanding to know if Google had really “shrunk their font to make it harder to read?”
@thisathranawaka even brought the brands rubber sealing process into question.
To be honest, the mystery of the entire saga really was making it all the more juicy. Soon users began to speculate about what exactly had happened during the change.
It was truly a case of tech bods to the rescue as resolutions of a font-related bug in the KDE and unrendered fonts on Google’s font server started to surface.
By around 10:30 pm the battlefield had started to dwindle. There were as many people noticing the jarring change as there were people rationalising Google’s hiccup.
Within two hours of the initial shockwave, life was back to normal. The panic was over and whatever had happened was now not happening.
Expressing relief, @Gus_802 tweeted, “Finally the world is saved.” as Google’s font seemingly slipped back into place. Returning to its classic Google Sans and putting a stop to the minor panic being played out in the Twitter feeds.
So, what we’ve learnt from this technological escapade is that Google, contrary to popular belief, is not in control of everything.
And that we need to stay off our phones more.