Gmail Favicons, Redux

In October, there was a buzz when TechCrunch reported seeing favicons (the little 16×16 icon you see in the browser bar) at the end of Gmail subject line, and we commented on it.

It seems that Google has now taken that a step further – check out this Gmail inbox, where the Buy.com favicon is front and center in the “from” field (good move, since this is more consistently visible)…

In addition to the standard images and offers, the body of the message seemed to be pulling some content from OpenSocial, but it wasn’t accessing properly, so it’s unclear what the full user experience was intended to be. 

Still, this is an interesting shift – even more so because this is exactly where our Truemark service places icons for legitiate messages from more than 1600 companies. And as a bonus it not only works with Gmail, but with AOL, Earthlink, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook and Outlook Express.