Google already had a black and white emoji font. I think from before color fonts were a thing. However they stopped updating that in 2015 (https://github.com/go

Google already had a black and white emoji font. I think from before color fonts were a thing. However they stopped updating that in 2015 (https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji/commits/2f1ffdd6fbbd05d6f382138a3d3adcd89c5ce800/fonts/NotoEmoji-Regular.ttf https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-emoji/commits/2f1ffdd6fb...). This is likely a descendant of that rather than completely from scratch. It's also interesting they call out emoji being too detailed as a problem. For some characters like Pistol (apple-fied into Squirt Gun) they've copied Apples style -- presumably to avoid confusion. So acknowledging that not all fonts need to look the same is a bit refreshing there. Though of course the black and white pistol still looks like a squirt-gun