Daum replaced its four-color logo with monochrome blue — users revolted, and it reverted

On 13 January 2025, Kakao's Content CIC overhauled the Daum portal — Korea's once-dominant web search engine — and replaced its iconic four-color logo (blue, green, yellow, orange, unchanged for 13 years) with a monochrome 'deep blue' single-color design. Daum said the old logo gave a 'complex and outdated impression' and the new look would create a 'more trustworthy image.'

Users complained that 'Daum's distinctive feeling decreased.' The monochrome UI stripped the portal of its remaining brand identity at a time when its search market share had already fallen to roughly 1–2%, ranking fourth behind Naver (65.4%), Google (27.8%) and even Bing (3.53%). The rebrand did not arrest the decline.

On 4 March 2026 — fourteen months later — AXZ, the entity operating Daum after its separation from Kakao, reversed the monochrome design and restored the four-color logo, alongside reviving real-time search trends that had been abolished in February 2020. AXZ said the four colors were brought back to represent Daum as 'a space where diverse voices gather.' The reversal was an admission that the rebrand had failed.