With this week’s ruling that Google did not infringe on porn merchant Perfect 10’s copyrights by indexing thumbnail images, a variety of image search companies will be breathing a sigh of relief.
The case centered on Google Image Search indexing thumbnail images and framing third-party web sites that contain the full size versions of Perfect 10’s content. With the ruling behind them, this approach to picture search now seems to be fully protected within the scope of copyright law. Here are 7 of the relieved parties (and possible alternatives to Google Image Search)...
Pixsy
Pixsy searches dozens of major sources like AOL, CNN, and FOX News to provide thumbnail image results. Pixsy even lets you filter results by source; so for example, you can see recent images from the Discovery Channel's web site. Thus, the ruling is an important victory for Pixsy, who also powers visual search for sites like Mamma.com, iStockphoto, and PureVideo.
Picsearch
Picsearch scours more than 1.7 billion images from around the Web to return thumbnail results. Similar to Google Images, Picsearch frames third-party sites containing the large version of selected photos. Like Pixsy, the company also licenses its search technology to other web sites, meaning the Google v. Perfect 10 ruling is also a victory for their partners.
Yotophoto
This startup is less impacted by the Google v. Perfect 10 ruling since they claim to only index “copyleft” images. Yotophoto’s search engine only includes images that are in the public domain, or released under a Creative Commons, GNU FDL, or similar license. Thus, while Yotophoto’s index is smaller that most of the other photo search engines, in most cases you can legally use the images found in the results.
Searchmash
This search engine combines photo thumbnails side by side with search results, blogs, and videos. Unlike Google Image Search, clicking on a thumbnail on Searchmash takes you directly to the web page hosting the full size version.
MSN Live Search
Of the big boys, MSN does the most with framing photo results from around the Web. Not only do they frame the big version of a selected image, they also persist the thumbnails in a frame to the left. Additionally, MSN Live Search shows related results in a frame to the right, which will bring up thumbnails for another selected topic.
Yahoo Image Search
Much like Google Image Search, Yahoo scours its entire index to return relevant photo thumbnails. To view the full version of a photo, the third-party site is launched in a frame, while Yahoo’s branding and the thumbnail image persist at the top of the browser.
Ask Images
Following the Google and Yahoo model, Ask also thumbnails and frames its photo search results.