That pin was designed by Jens Rasmussen, a senior software engineer at Google, who co-founded a mapping start-up that was later purchased by Google in 2004. When Google bought his company, Rasmussen came along as one of the engineering leads of the project, which we now know as Google Maps. A Google spokesperson told me by e-mail that “Jens spent a lot of time thinking about what was appropriate to use as a pin — he avoided putting a dot or star flat on the map because it tended to obscure the area.” The final shape, which houses a letter from A through J is a product of pure function that has evolved into a cultural phenomenon.