As a blogger, I search Flickr and other photo sites for Creative Commons commercial licensed content on a daily basis. I like Google’s image search feature but the ability to search Creative Commons and other licensed content was a missing. Today, Google is launching the ability to create and advanced search for images that you can use for free and that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons. Searches will also include images and art that have been tagged with other licenses, like GNU Free Documentation license, or are in the public domain.
For me, the new feature is already listed under the advanced image search page. Under the “Usage rights” section, you can select the type of license you’d like to search for, such as those marked for reuse or even for commercial reuse with modification. Google says they will slowly be rolling out this to everyone throughout the day.
Unfortunately, Google warns that its up to you to verify that the licensing information is accurate and says that they can’t guarantee that the content that is found under a search is in the public domain,or available under the license.
The nice thing about the search capability is that it allows you to do a licensed image search for Flickr, and a variety of other sites and sources, as opposed to searching for content only on Flickr. Yahoo has had the capability to filter image searches by licensed content for some time, but Yahoo’s licensed content search appears to pull images mostly from Flickr, where Google provides a diverse selection of sources of licensed images. I wonder when Bing will jump on the licensed content bandwagon?
Love this!
I like it too. This will make searching images online a lot easier. Anybody looking to enhance their images should look into this – http://bit.ly/yIvWP
Cool feature. Makes image-searching a breeze. http://bit.ly/yIvWP
whoa. epic.
The new advanced feature may help people to search free, licensed image content. But how to verify the licensing information of the images?
Good question. How do you verify that you can use the images as i guess anyone can add cc to any image even if they don’t have the rights to do so. So if I use an image that has cc without right to have cc am I liable???
Just because it’s Creative Commons doesn’t necessarily make it ok to use…
Great news!
CREATIVE COMMONS = GREAT FOR INNOVATION
It’s great that one can search Google images for content that is unrestricted by copyright laws. I like to use images in my content because a “picture is worth a thousand words.” For those that do not understand the concept of creative commons, please read more at http://www.creativecommons.org
Creative Commons does not make an image “unrestricted by copyright laws” – it allows for certain restricted uses.
This is fantastic news! Much needed feature.
Good news!
now the images we use in the blog will not create any problem
It’s good to know that you can use the images and know that what you are using is legal and you will not get sued.
I wish this setting could be saved as preference – would save a lot of extra clicks.
Love this, but I was disappointed they did not have this as the default option or feature creative commons photos in the first row of results.
Simply Brilliant! Google does it AGAIN!!!
I hope they can add the option to make this the default search