Creative Commons comes to Google Image Search

Fred sez, "Image search on Google has just become a bit easier and a little less scary: Google officially launched the ability to filter search results using Creative Commons licenses inside their Image Search tool. Searches are also capable of returning content under other licenses, such as the GNU Free Documentation License, or images that are in the public domain."

Advanced image search page (Thanks, Fred!)

[#1 posted by matt joyce, July 9, 2009 1:07 PM]

This is very cool. And very useful.

[#2 posted by sopekmir, July 9, 2009 1:18 PM]

Certainly - that's good step. I usually like news from Google related to their main business - i.e. search engine.

I would be even more happy to see Google parade into new frontiers of search - that of Semantic Web - in good sense of the word "semantic" (don't think I'm for the SW hype)

Recent news, however (Wave, Chrome OS) were a bit disturbing. I do not believe they could succeed in OS market (though I would like to see less Windows machines around), and I do not bet on their success in communication platform (however excellent it could be).

I think they make big error by doing Semantic Web in a crippled way (see: http://sopekmir.blogspot.com/2009/07/googles-step-into-semantic-web-genuine.html )
and I see Chrome OS and Wave as bed step.

So - using CC is a small but important relieve :-)

Well... maybe it's a good sign - the world can be better if not 95% of all searches on the web are not offered by one entity....

[#3 posted by airshowfan, July 9, 2009 1:50 PM]

I thought Google had a CC filter in the advanced search options, for many years. Did that not cover images? I guess not. So, yeah, thumbs up.

[#4 posted by Nougat, July 9, 2009 2:10 PM]

This is great, however, I wish it differentiated between public domain images and attribution licensed images.

Oh well, maybe I am missing something.

[#5 posted by Anonymous, July 9, 2009 2:44 PM]

So - is there a way I can tag images on my website to let the googlebot know that the images it's crawling are under CC?

[#6 posted by Anonymous, July 9, 2009 2:56 PM]

FUCK YEAH!

[#7 posted by Shelby Davis, July 9, 2009 8:06 PM]

FTW!

[#8 posted by billtheburger, July 10, 2009 2:31 AM]

As long as i don't end up on a BNP leaflet:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bnps-british-builders-are-american-1686785.html

[#9 posted by Anonymous, July 10, 2009 4:39 AM]

It looks like Flickr has a way to do it but the most common way is to use RDF coding.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/07/usage-rights-options-in-google-image.html

And here from CC directly..

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/License_Output

[#10 posted by capl, July 10, 2009 5:12 AM]

@bill
Thus the need for authentic cc licensed photos like with CAPK
http://capl.washjeff.edu/
Although google images has 10k photos from us they are not yet marked as cc. We will code them soon.

[#11 posted by coffeemoon, July 10, 2009 6:53 AM]

How does on mark images under any licence so that the search engines understands the licence used? XMP, EXIF? alt-tag ???? Any documentation available?

Having the search option is all good an well, unless you don't know how to implement it yourself!

[#12 posted by capl, July 10, 2009 7:04 AM]

@ Coffeemoon,
RDF Coding looks like it will work.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/License_Output

Any other solutions?

[#13 posted by coffeemoon, July 10, 2009 7:11 AM]

@ Capl, Thanx for that, I'll look into it!

[#14 posted by Spankr, July 10, 2009 9:55 AM]

It doesn't seem to work well - this photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwkphotos/415146987/
is "All Rights Reserved", but shows as reusable in Google image search...

[#15 posted by Anonymous, July 31, 2009 7:49 AM]

Wow, I've been waiting for this for a while now