That little green robot has been Android’s logo since the beginning – well, since Google acquired this particular startup and decided to turn it into what it is today, which is when it gave the logo design job to one of its employees, Irina Blok.
According to the New York Times, Blok received the Android logo job back in 2007 when she was working at Google.
The company wanted a logo for the mobile software platform that “consumers could easily identify.” Google also wanted the logo to “involve” a robot. So Blok researched robots by looking at toys and space movies, but ultimately she was inspired by public bathrooms:
[…]the pictograms of the universal man and woman that often appear on restroom doors. She drew a stripped-down robot with a tin-can-shaped torso and antennas on his head.