Yahoo's change was more the CEO deciding that she can redo it in a weekend. I would think any change from Google would go through a UX/UI design team and a ton of redundant meetings... not sure which is worse.

I don't think they went through any UX team here. Google needs a new face, a new logo. The colorful serif-font logo looks very childish and 90's.

"Googol" is a word invented by a child. "Google" is a homophone of this word. How to do you give the logo a less-childish treatment while maintaining a name that is also childish?