The Google Chrome logo has already come in for some dissection by bloggers. Is it a webcam, Pokemon Poke Ball, Simon game or itself an echo of the Firefox logo, muses Google Blogoscoped? [Discovered via Neatorama]

We have another take on the logo. The Runner was designed on the same night as Google Chrome was released. It was immediately clear that the presence of Chrome would change the Internet and the way we interact with the Web. Whatever the browser’s merits, however long it takes in beta, the very existence of Chrome changes the world, much as ten years ago, its parent company changed the way we search the Web, Chrome will change the way we interact with it. 

ChromeRunner.logo emerges from Google Chrome logo

The mascot was designed to reflect this. The four segments of the Google Chrome logo were roughly traced over in Inkscape, enough to keep the character, not enough to be accused of infringement (I hope).

The segments were flipped, transformed, re-aligned to form the little guy whom we dubbed The Runner, and then all the bits were aquafied. The vector was exported to PNG format and a little favicon was made in The GIMP.  We have fallen in love with the mascot already and are already preparing to put him on our own T-Shirt. 

Even as Chrome is not yet a week old, it has captured one percent of the browser share, and our own imagination. Our logo is intended in that sense: we needed a mascot but also designed it as a tribute to its parent. We hope you like it — tell us what you think in the comments.