Those looking for free images, bloggers in particular, are getting a lot of attention from media and technology companies. In addition to GumGum securing another round of financing and the recent launches of Fotoglif and OffiSync 2.0, both of which endeavor to make it easy to source free images online, Google has integrated sort-by-usage-rights into Google Images.
According to the announcement, Google is “launching a feature on Image Search to help you find images that you can use for free, while respecting the wishes of artists and creators.” Google’s advanced image search now provides a usage-rights drop-down menu, largely based on the Creative Commons licensing system, which offers three options: free to use and share; free to use, share or modify; and free to use commercially. Using the drop-down will also return images in the public domain or those with other free-to-use licenses, such as the GNU Free Documentation license.
Google’s goal is to help artists who want their images to be discovered and reused online. While the intent and underlying technology is sound, the new feature relies entirely on user input to determine rights information, gathering it from sites such as Flickr, personal blogs and other sources that do not provide reliable ownership information. Photo District News’ Daryl Lang found a number of iconic images—such as Steve McCurry’s famous photo of an Afghan girl—misidentified by Google Images as free for commercial use.
Still, Google’s integration of rights information should be viewed as a positive development by content owners. It may not solve the problem of an individual swiping and reposting a copyrighted image, but a leading search engine’s heightened focus on content ownership and appropriate use encourages the same in end users.