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 pri ...

and web font service owned by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. 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 Apis or APIS may refer to: * Apis (deity), an ancient Egyptian god * Apis (Greek mythology), several different figures in Greek mythology * Apis (city), an ancient seaport town on the northern coast of Africa **Kom el-Hisn, a different Egyptian ci ...

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 t ...

and Android. Popular fonts in the Google Fonts library include

Roboto Roboto () is a Sans-serif#Neo-grotesque, neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google as the system font for its mobile operating system Android (operating system), Android, and released in 2011 for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, ...

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 wi ...

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 Canter ...

, 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 American ...

, 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 technolo ...

. 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, co ...

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 integ ...

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 The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL Internationa ...

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 f ...

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 i ...

's SkyFonts and Adobe's Edge Web Fonts and

Adobe Fonts Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) is an online service that provides its subscribers with access to its font library, under a single licensing agreement. The fonts may be used directly on websites, or synced via Adobe Creative Cloud to applications ...

(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 (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 mod ...

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