Among the complaints listed in the lawsuit was the fact that many of those  sites use the Google logo without permission. From Google’s blog post on the subject:

You may have seen offers like these using Google’s name or logo that sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are, and, despite hundreds of consumer complaints and our own efforts to keep these sites from tricking people, some scams continue. To fight back, we’re working to stop various fraudulent “Google Money” schemes, and this week filed suit against Pacific WebWorks and several other unnamed defendants.

Now obviously the problem is that these sites were pretending to BE Google, or at the very least pretending to be authorized by Google, when in fact they were not.

Now if you are using the Google logo on your site in an appropriate, non-commercial way (as it is used in this blog post), you should not have anything to worry about (I think?). It should, however, serve as a warning to anyone that uses the Google logo on their commercial site, especially if your are selling SEO services, to make sure that it is VERY clear that you are not in any way affiliated with Google.

Read more about the lawsuit over at the Official Google Blog.

To see the changes yourself first go to http://www.google.com

..and then copy and paste the following into the browser bar and hit return:
javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

The new design, as seen below, makes some updates to the style of the logo and makes considerable use of the color blue.

There have also been some changes to  the results page:

We’ll see if this actually goes anywhere…

And there is obviously eBay, which has actually worked the transparency of the different letters in their logo into the sign itself (or at least the illusion of the letters being transparent).

One of my favorite logos of all time is also featured below, I’ve been in love with the Newsvine logo ever since I first saw the brand on the wall, which completely turns a rather nondescript logo into something very powerful and corporate.

And this post would certainly not be complete without showing how you can butcher a logo as well:

Above, the Toyota logo is used very poorly (in my opinion) on the outside of a building. I’m not quite sure what the designer was thinking as I’ve seen better representations of the Toyota brand on the back of a car.

The Microsoft headquarters, while not completely butchering the job, still missed out on a lot when putting this sign up, the contrast between the logo and the wall just doesn’t do it for me, and I feel they could have really made a better job of it (black logo on a white wall?)

In closing, when creating your brand remember to treat your company logo like it’s going to be representing the next Ford Motor Company or AT& T and be pasted all over the place. Hey, you never know!