Yahoo has integrated the photo sharing site Flickr into its Yahoo Image Search.
Google and Yahoo on Wednesday enhanced their respective online photo services, Picasa Web Albums and Flickr. The two search engines upgraded their respective online photo services to give consumers a more integrated experience.
In an effort to trump Google in the Image Search arena, Yahoo! has announced that from now on whenever a Yahoo! image search is carried out, image results from its Flickr photo sharing website will also be included amongst the normal results trawled from the web.
The new feature allows over 300 million images that have been posted and indexed on Flickr to show on relevant search results pages.
The search results are displayed with a thumbnail of the image and look similar to standard image search results, aside from the inclusion of a link to the photographer’s profile on Flickr underneath the image.
If you see a group of photographs that you enjoy in Image Search, you can also search Yahoo! Images for the photographer’s Flickr user name to display images from only that photographer.
Photos included are those that have been marked as “safe.”
“We had a couple of objectives for this integration,” explained Ujwal Tickoo, senior product manager for Yahoo Search, in a blog post.
“First, we wanted to ensure that we respected the contributions from the Flickr community and give credit where credit is due.”
Yahoo Image Search thus attributes the photo to the Flickr photographer who took the picture. And clicking on the search thumbnail takes the searcher to the photographer’s Flickr public photo stream.
“Second, we wanted to build a scalable integration that surfaced the freshest, most relevant content from Flickr,” added Tickoo. As a result, we have built this integration via a direct feed versus an API, ensuring timely results for your image queries, including any modifications or additions that are made in Flickr.
The Yahoo! teams have made sure that the newest and most relevant images from Flickr are displayed by creating a direct feed rather than using an API solution. This has been implemented so that any modifications or additions that are made to Flickr will also show up automatically on Yahoo! Image Search.
Google, however, continues to index images from Flickr in the same way as it indexes images from every other website and as a result it is much slower to update.
The use of a feed allows Yahoo! Images to provide better results from Flickr than Google Images. The feed provided from Flickr means that Yahoo! Images is being constantly updated in real time in order to provide the most up to the minute results.
This change to Image Search follows the recent trend by Yahoo! to concentrate more on expanding Flickr’s services. Recently, Flickr completely replaced Yahoo!’s photos service and has also been launched in seven world languages in order to allow for greater localization.
Meanwhile, Google’s recent acquisition of Spanish company Panoramio, whose technology allows users to pin pictures to Google’s online maps, now appears to be the start of a new expansion by the search engine giant into online photo sharing, with two new features being announced this week.
Google quite literally has put Picasa Web Albums on the map. Picasa users now have the option to place images in their Picasa Web Albums on an online map. Friends and family with whom those photos have been shared can then see where the images were captured using either Google Maps or Google Earth.
To do this, select a Picasa Web Album and click on the Edit Album Properties link. This opens a menu that allows address entry. After clicking the Update Map link, save the edit and use the Map Photos button atop the images to drag photos from the left hand photo inventory to the map.
You can even drag and drop individual photos directly onto a map, and use built-in Google Maps technology to pinpoint exactly where each was shot.
Of course, images can be placed anywhere, regardless of where they were actually taken. This may open the door to a new form of public commentary by which the obvious disconnect between image and geography serves as commentary.
The team at Google has also been working to improve access to online photos, even when a user is nowhere near a PC. With the launch of Picasa Web Albums for mobile devices, users can now view their photo albums any place, at any time.
“Thumbnails and photos are automatically re-sized for your device’s screen, so pictures look good and download fast. All you need to get started is a phone with a web browser and a data plan.”
Google also launched a version of Picasa Web Albums for mobile devices.
The mobile version of Picasa Web Albums will also let users see the latest picture updates from friends and even add comments to photos using their mobile phones. The whole process is geared towards making Picasa Web Albums more accessible and convenient for its users.
Following on from the popularity of photo share sites and social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, Google have taken photo sharing one step further with the launch of “Map My Photos.” As the Software Engineers at Google state:
With the launch of Map My Photos and Picasa Web Albums for mobile devices, users will now have more options than ever before for online photo storage and sharing.
With “Map My Photos,” not only can users share their photos with friends, they can actually add the pictures to a map to show exactly where the snaps were taken.
The service is similar to a feature used by Chinese search engine Baidu, and adds photos to the Google News service.
It remains to be seen how usable the system is, but it gives web news junkies another option and broadens Google’s scope as it looks to strengthen its internet marketing position.