Google Fonts (formerly known as Google Web Fonts) is a

computer font A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...

and

web font Web typography is the use of fonts on the World Wide Web. When HTML was first created, font faces and styles were controlled exclusively by the settings of each web browser. There was no mechanism for individual Web pages to control font display ...

service owned by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

. This includes

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

font families, an interactive web directory for browsing the library, and APIs for using the fonts via

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

and Android. Popular fonts in the Google Fonts library include

Roboto Roboto () is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google as the system font for its mobile operating system Android, and released in 2011 for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich". The entire font family has been licensed un ...

Open Sans Open Sans is an open source humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Steve Matteson, commissioned by Google and released in 2011. It is based on his previous Droid Sans design, designed for Android mobile devices, but slightly wider. Featuring ...

Lato Lato ( grc, Λατώ, Latṓ) was an ancient city of Crete, the ruins of which are located approximately 3 km from the village of Kritsa. History The Dorian city-state was built in a defensible position overlooking Mirabello Bay betw ...

Oswald Oswald may refer to: People * Oswald (given name), including a list of people with the name *Oswald (surname), including a list of people with the name Fictional characters *Oswald the Reeve, who tells a tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbu ...

, Montserrat,

Source Sans Pro Source Sans Pro is a sans serif typeface created by Paul D. Hunt, released by Adobe in 2012. It is the first open-source font family from Adobe, distributed under the SIL Open Font License. The typeface is inspired by the forms of the Americ ...

, and Raleway.

History

Google Fonts was launched in 2010 and revamped in 2011, 2016, and 2020. On March 3, 2020, Google updated the catalog website with support for

variable fonts A variable font (VF) is a font file that is able to store a continuous range of design variants. An entire typeface (font family) can be stored in such a file, with an infinite number of fonts available to be sampled. The variable font technol ...

. On March 2, 2021, the Google Fonts team announced they were adding support for open source icons.

Font library

, Google Fonts had 1,464 font families, including 276 variable font families. The library is maintained through Google Fonts'

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

repository, where all font files can be obtained directly. Source files for many of the fonts are available from

git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

repositories within the Google Fonts' GitHub organization, along with

libre software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

tools used by the Google Fonts community.

Licenses and distribution

Most of the fonts are released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, while some are released under the Apache License; both are

libre Libre may refer to: Computing * Libre software, free software * Libre Computer Project, developer of open-hardware single-board computers Medicine *FreeStyle Libre, a glucose monitoring device Media * Libre Times, news site which people can free ...

licenses. The font library is also distributed by

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...

's SkyFonts and Adobe's Edge Web Fonts and Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) services.

Privacy issues

In February 2022, a German court ruled that a website using Google Fonts violated the European Union

General Data Protection Regulation The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union regulation on data protection and privacy in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of EU privacy law and of human rights law, in partic ...

(GDPR) by passing personally identifiable information (

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

) to Google without the user's consent or a legitimate interest in doing so.

References

External links

* Typography

Fonts In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mode ...

{{Google-stub