Microsoft’s new logo (bottom) bears a striking resemblance to Googles brand pages icon… (top)Microsoft rolled out a new logo to great fanfare last week. Bully for them. It’s about time. I’m not a big fan of the software giant, but I do grant that their products have made computing more affordable and accessible since the home computing revolution took off in the 1990s.

But their marketing sucks! I won’t roll out the old tropes of Microsoft versus Apple. Apple did that perfectly in a stellar ad campaign, and Microsoft have never quite managed to hit back. 

So maybe the new logo was planned to address Microsoft’s still flabby image. Only, only… It does’t quite do that. Aside from other critiques, well-articulated, what I noticed was a striking similarity between the new logo, and one that’s been used on Google’s brand pages for some time now. Here’s the two side-by-side. What do you think? They are rather similar, aren’t they? Yet again, Microsoft is trying to reimagine itself in the face of stiff competition. And failing miserably. C’mon Microsoft, can’t you do better?

Blogger Jesse Stay just wrote a thoughtful post about Apple’s launch of Ping its music social platform for sharing music.

Just announced by the company’s CEO Steve Jobs, Ping is a social application

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