Google search UI color changes: good artists copy, great artists steal?

...and great google artists duplicate independently.

Although they surely arrived at it on their own, I do notice a design similarity between google's new search color palette and the one in place at Design and Analytics for several months.  The red links, the dark gray, light gray, and white---there's something to it.  Looks like Design and Analytics will have to move on to something new soon.  (Maybe we should set our logo to primary colors plus green?) 

As you can guess, our thoughts on the UI color change are favorable.  It's a quality palette for web-reading, looks handsome and modern, and conveys a tone appropriate to both art and data.  It's non-obtrusive, and not distracting, but not unemphatic.  I can't say I could have done better myself.  But as our eyes acclimate to seeing this for countless searches, (and more or less google plus), the trends will move against it soon enough.  Google is in a tough position that way---they are so visible that they need to be minimalist and clean, all design must be a non-design to avoid fatiguing their users.  And they've done well here. 

Still, cases of independent design convergence always make me wonder whether there are optimal palettes for particular purposes that are deeper than fashion trends, but reside somewhere between our hard-wired information processing, and the physics of color itself.  I tend to believe optimal solutions exist, but are usually unknowable.  Here, though, I think we're onto something.