I’m kind of glad that the New Yorker published this article lambasting the new Google logo as it helped to solidify my opinion on it.
I happen to like the new logo. It does what it needs to do from a design perspective. I don’t mean aesthetic, I mean design. It needed to be clean and easy to read on mobile, which is where most people consume these days; it reflects the new Alphabet corporate feel, which the former Google corporation needs to promote; and it is less unwieldy from a rendering point-of-view, which is important as bandwidth and processing power is precious. I’m sure a lot of people find it jarring, since the Goog didn’t prepare us, but I admire that they released it this way – they got the logo onto the site, several of their apps (although it would have been great if it were in all of them), and onto their headquarters building in Mountain View. Honestly, I think more people should be discussing the upcoming Verizon change (ugh) than this. I like that they are completely embracing the idea of design – this goes so much better with the new Material Design aesthetic than the old Google “Anti-Logo” did. It bodes well for design as a whole that the company that didn’t care one whit about what a thing looks like has realized that design can make everything more useable – both engineering-wise, and pleasure-wise.
As a side note: I just want to say: using the hipster Comic Sans hatred in design commentary is the last refuge of a scoundrel. It is overused and needs to go away.
Jason Polkovitz 
I don’t love either of the Verizon logos, but I’ll definitely take the new one over the old one, if only for simplicity. On the old one, the gradient of the “check/V” never reproduced well, and having both the check/V AND the Z as red visual ‘zooms’ was way too much. Overkill. (God, that logo bugged me.)
But I’m okay with the new Google, and you make good points about the objective reasons for the change.
electrofork – I agree that the old Verizon logo wasn’t very good, and the “check/V” WAS difficult to reproduce (there’s a sign near me that is just AWFUL in its attempt), but at least the check MEANT something. It was a stylized V. Now it just looks like the creative director approved the use of the new typeface and sent the hard copy back to the art director to continue working on a new logo. I don’t mind simple – hell, I think successfully done simplicity is the heart of great design – but a logo still has to stand out. Verizon certainly had to update from their early 90s style logo, and there might be good bones there, but it doesn’t feel finished.