By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

Mutant favicons in Google Chrome

I realize I’ll need the world’s smallest violin to drum up any sympathy for this one, but tonight I am irritated at the rogue favicons that have cropped up in Google Chrome.

As you can see, AT&T favicons have taken over my bookmarks for Google Calendar and Media Nation log-on, thanks to my hanging out at Barnes & Noble. Then, today, when I used WiFi on a commuter train, the favicon for that service ate the brain of my Google Calendar bookmark.

Anyone know how to change them back?

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9 Comments

  1. Ron Newman

    I wonder if it would help if you explicitly try loading http://whatever.site.url/favicon.ico into your browser, for each such site?

  2. Ron Newman

    No, just the host name followed by /favicon.ico, like this:

    http://www.google.com/favicon.ico

    If you get the ‘wrong’ one, force-reload it.

    • Dan Kennedy

      @Ron: That does give me the favicon, but what am I supposed to do with it? I don’t seem to be able to drag and drop it in order to replace mutant favicons.

  3. Ron Newman

    I was hoping that just loading it that way would cause your browser to cache it properly for later display in the toolbar. Doesn’t work? (If not, I unfortunately don’t have another suggestion.)

    • Dan Kennedy

      @Ron: Not only does it not work, but the problem is restricted to very specific subsites. Going to Google isn’t going to help, because I don’t have a problem with Google — I have a problem with Google Reader and Google Calendar. Weird.

  4. Ron Newman

    Google Calendar has this in its HTML:

    <link rel=”SHORTCUT ICON” href=”//calendar.google.com/googlecalendar/images/favicon_v2010.ico”>

    so you may want to try going to http://calendar.google.com/googlecalendar/images/favicon_v2010.ico explicitly and see if the problem still exists after you do that.

    Similarly, Google Reader uses http://www.google.com/reader/ui/favicon.ico

    • Dan Kennedy

      @Ron: That didn’t work, but I tried something else — deleted the bookmarks and then did it again. Worked for two of the three, anyway. Thanks.

  5. You are heard with a BIG violin over here… I hadn’t realized that this issue may be only Chrome related (what I use exclusively).

    What is really bothering me, is that a rogue icon has kidnapped one of my sites (www.mancoslibrary.org)!! I noticed within the last couple of weeks, that the little Wi-Fi logo has been appearing next to our site name in the top tab – in the address bar, there is no favicon at all!

    I’ve been messing with this for a while today before I found your post. (ie, uploading a completely new favicon – SEVERAL times.)

    Safari is the only browser that is showing our logo! Grrrr…

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