Coincidence or Conspiracy? Origin of Google Safe Search Colored Balls Logo

12 days back when Google introduced their ‘Lock’ feature to the (in)famous Safe Search, TechChunks was one of the first to come up with the news update. Here is a brief overview of how this new feature works:

Via this new feature Google will let you lockdown SafeSearch settings. Once you put your search on lockdown, you’ll need to enter a password to revert back, and you’ll know your results are safe because you’ll see big, colored balls. Yeah, SafeSearch has been around for awhile, but users can now lock their setting to a “strict” setting that cannot be turned off or changed unless you type in the password. Meanwhile, searches that are done using SafeSearch will include an icon of four colored balls in the top, right-hand corner of the results page, so users know that SafeSearch is on.

This morning while munching through my daily dose of technology diet, I came across an interesting PDF created by Google’s Amit Singhal, way back in 2004 (according to SEO Book). The PDF deals with all the different ways people try to spam Google and that is an entirely different topic altogether that I’ll save for another time. What is important here is the year 2004 when this PDF article was prepared! If you look closely, you’ll probably notice our friend, the four colored balls logo (yes the same Logo that Google is using now on it’s newly launched ‘Lock’ feature in ‘Safe Search’) on the top-right corner of all 50 slides of that presentation! The only difference being – now the distance of these balls are slightly altered and while the position of the Green and Red ball have been kept intact, the Blue and Yellow balls have received a position-swapping!

Could this be a coincidence? Is it possible that Google managed to come up with a strikingly similar logo 5 long years after it was used on an official presentation by a Google Engineer? Or is it a conspiracy?

Well, we’ll leave that up to our readers to (compare the 2 screenshots here and) decide. Whether coincidence or conspiracy, we must admit that we love this new Logo that Google is using for its Safe Search now. What do you think? Do you have another theory for the origin of Google’s safe search colored balls logo? Let us hear