Google Fights Microsoft With New Android Branding

According to forbes, google has updated its own applications for Android with a subtle graphical tweak to remind users just who the driving force behind the ecosystem actually is. Not only are splash screens now an acceptable part of Android design, Google is making immediate use of them in a defensive move against other cloud providers such as Microsoft.
    Opening the latest updates to its apps will result in a white screen and an oversized icon to be shown, along with the familiar Google corporate logo (reports Tom Maxwell). The changes are rolling out across the platform now through the automatic app updates through the Play Store, with the productivity apps of Google Docs and Google Sheets some of the earliest apps to show the Google emblazoned splash screen.
  Previous versions of Android discouraged this practice, and there’s no technical reason why they should be brought back now in terms of the time required to open an application on an Android device. It’s always been in the best interests of a developer to have an app open as quickly as possible, and resorting to a splash screen to cover a few seconds of background action was always a rather quick sticking plaster over a complicated subject.