Google Web Fonts
There seems to have been several useful projects quietly slipping out of Google HQ over the last few months. One that caught my attention recently has been Google Fonts.
As many will know (not just from me harping on about it!), fonts on the web have for some years been a nightmare. Anything beyond the standard webfonts available on people's machines (Arial/Helvetica, Times etc) become a pain to use. We either have to paint them in as graphics, something which doesn't lend itself well to updates or SEO, or have them automatically generated using font replacement techniques.
Unfortunately all the font replacement techniques have some drawbacks, but the bigger problem has always been the copyright issues surrounding fonts, as using any technique which allows every letter to be generated falls afoul of a lot of font licences. Those which do permit embedding have a tendency to look very poor I'm told (the old adage 'you pay for what you get' seems to apply with a lot of free fonts).
Google's latest project looks to be a way to try and tackle this. It's aim is to create a library of embeddable fonts for websites, but which are both cleared from legal issues, and more important designed to be of a higher quality than some of the current offerings. At the moment there aren't many fonts actually in the library, but as it only launched in May it's one of those things I'll be keeping a close eye on to see if they can make this work. Google are very good at throwing their considerable clout behind projects and making them work where other attempts have failed, so I'm hopeful!
http://code.google.com/webfonts
Posted By: Terence
14 June 2010