I was observing the logo evolution of Tech giants like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Intel etc and it was reasonably interesting. There is one clear trend, more the company becomes mature and prominent, logo becomes more simpler. Along with logo evolution, I will brief you about some very interesting facts as well. For example, Intel was given a name like ‘Moore Noyce’ but idea was dropped due to funny reason! Initially Nokia was nothing but a paper manufacturing unit and last but not least, due to trademark conflict, Mozilla changed the name twice for its browser before settling for Firefox.

1. IBM

IBM, with revenue of around US$ 100 billion is one of the oldest IT giant. Originally it was founded as International Time Recording Company (ITR) in 1888 by Willard L. Bundy. Later in 1911, it was incorporated as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR). In 1917, CTR’s Canadian and later South American subsidiary was named International Business Machines (IBM), and the whole company took this name in 1924 when Thomas J. Watson took the regime.

Now lets take a look at logo evolution, In 1947 IBM decided to shift from the punched-card tabulating business to computers. To signify this change IBM altered logo and dropped the globe out of it. Subsequent change in 1972 was made to depict speed and dynamism with introduction of stripes into logo.
(Source of information: 1, 2)

2. APPLE

Apple, brain child of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was established in 1976. Apple saw many ups and down but was successful to create most distinguished and a unique brand value. Steve Jobs, the man behind the scene, crafted the path for Apple with extra ordinary passion, patience and effort.

The first logo of Apple was little complicated depicting Isaac Newton sitting under a Apple tree with an inscription: “Newton … A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone.” But Immediately Jobs realized to simplify the logo and it resulted into new simple logo with bitten apple filled with rainbow colors. Such colorful logo was chosen to represent the fact that monitor could reproduced the image in color. Later on Apple came up with current glassy finish logo.
(Source of information: 1)

3. GOOGLE

Google, well known for its informal culture, doesn’t spare its corporate logo too. As of January 2010 , Google’s own gallery featured 712 logos. Here I have listed three official corporate logos. For your kind information, this search engine giant processes 20 Petabytes of data everyday!!!!!

In 1998, Sergey Bin created a Google logo using GIMP after learning how to use it. Later on the exclamation mark was added, mimicking the Yahoo! logo. The current official logo was designed by Ruth Kedar in 1999.
(Source of information: 1, 2)

4. MICROSOFT

Microsoft, a precious gem in software industry was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It’s initial public stock offering (IPO) was in 1986; Company’s continuous outstanding performance in stock price has made four billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees.

In 1987, Scott Baker created new logo having a slash between the o and s to emphasize the “soft” part of the name and to convey motion and speed. There was a campaign initiated by one of employee against change but it couldn’t stop it. This logo was famous as “the Pacman logo” due to the distinctive cut in the O. Later on tag line keeps changing over the time with the logo remaining almost same.
(Source of information: 1)

5.  INTEL

Intel was founded by Gordon E. Moore (of “Moore’s Law” fame, a chemist and physicist) and Robert Noyce (a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit) in 1968. Founders wanted to name their new company Moore Noyce. However the name sounds very much similar to more noise — indeed an ill-suited name for an electronics company. Then they choose the name NM Electronics for a year, before finalizing to INTegrated ELectronics or Intel for short. In 2006, Intel decided to discontinue its long running and successful ‘Intel Inside’ campaign and came up with ‘Leap Ahead’ slogan.
(Source of information: 1)

6. FIREFOX

The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross. Earlier the Firefox project was titled as Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark  conflicts with Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, again provoked an intense response from the Firebird free database software project. Continuing pressure from the database server’s development community  forced Mozila to change the name to Mozilla Firefox on February 9, 2004.

In 2003, the current famous logo was designed by John Hicks. The logo depicted a Firefox surrounding the whole world to signify the global market penetration the company strives for. Since then no major changes in logo other than color variations.
(Source of information: 1)

7. NOKIA

Today’s modern Nokia was nothing but a paper manufacturing mill back in 1865 founded by Fredrik Idestam. Setting up a pulp mill in a town called Nokia is a reason behind origin of the name. Let me cut this short here, the three companies, Nokia Ab, Finnish Rubber Works and Finnish Cable works were merged together to form a new industrial conglomerate, Nokia Corporation in 1967. Since its inception, Nokia produced wide range of goods like paper products, chemicals, consumer electronics, personal computers, robotics, military equipment etc. In early 1990s, Nokia faced serious financial problems due to heavy losses in television manufacturing unit under the regime of CEO Kari Kairamo. That is considered as a reason behind suicide of Kari Kairamo.  However in 1992, the new CEO Jorma Ollila made a crucial strategic decision to concentrate solely on telecommunications and the rest is history.
(Source: 1, 2)

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