Esteemed bleeding-edge browser downloaders, we are saddened to announce that Chrome's bulbous, off-center and slightly 90s-looking logo is back.

The change occurred yesterday, when the Chrome Dev channel was moved from version 11 to version 12. We're not yet sure whether this is simply a mistake, or an actual reversion to the previous logo. We're seeing the change on both Windows and Mac builds of Chrome, incidentally.

The odd thing is, it was only four days ago that the Google Chrome team published its rationale for the previous logo change. It sounds like they put a lot of effort into the new logo, too! If the logo has actually been reverted, it's possible that the new logo was merely a beta test -- Google may have guaged populist opinion and found that people preferred the orb.

Which logo do you prefer? You can see some before-and-after(-and-before) shots of the Chrome logo after the break.

Just a week after its open-source brother Chromium had its logo summarily flattened, Chrome has followed suit. For now it's only available in the Developer channel, but presumably it will quickly percolate down to the Beta and Stable channels. There are some more images of the new logo after the break.

It was originally speculated that the Chromium logo change was to differentiate it from Chrome, but now it looks like Google might just have grown tired of the unbalanced, 3D-effect Chrome orb. The new geometric design is definitely easier on the eye, and it will be a lot more flexible too. It looks great on the Windows 7 taskbar, too.

We expect there'll be a statement from Google about the new logo later today, and we'll update this post when we find out more.