The icon is great, it follows the same style as their logo.

It sort of resembles a Pokeball though (from Pokemon) but due to the colors you can tell it's from Google. As for comparing it to the Firefox logo, it's more colorful but I think the fox sticks out more. It definitely beats the IE icon though.

Yes, it follows the google colors, but same are the colors for Windows for instance. It does look like the pokeball... LOL!
I personally don't like it very much, but it's ok, after all look at Google's logo - they never looked cool in terms of design... oh and what about that terrible "g" as .ico in the browser!