Wow. I wonder what this means for the future of Font Awesome.
I know plenty of people are anti-Google, and also prefer SVG's over icon fonts for valid reasons (though you can download these as SVG's as well).
But now that this is easier to embed than Font Awesome, has basically the same number/range of icons as Font Awesome's free tier, doesn't come with the 10K pageviews/mo. restriction that Font Awesome's free tier comes with, and so many sites already use Google Fonts for their display and/or body text...
...I'd be very surprised if this doesn't quickly become the new de-facto standard icon font.
Font Awesome’s product has long been destined for commoditization. Which is probably why they have diversified to offering custom icons and other differentiating behavior.
I suspect google won’t be the only one to offer icon sets like this, so in general I agree this will continue to erode FA’s market share.
Fwiw, It has felt like FA’s most recent release fell far behind schedule.
I know plenty of people are anti-Google, and also prefer SVG's over icon fonts for valid reasons (though you can download these as SVG's as well).
But now that this is easier to embed than Font Awesome, has basically the same number/range of icons as Font Awesome's free tier, doesn't come with the 10K pageviews/mo. restriction that Font Awesome's free tier comes with, and so many sites already use Google Fonts for their display and/or body text...
...I'd be very surprised if this doesn't quickly become the new de-facto standard icon font.