Yahoo Launches Creative Commons Image Search

Yahoo Image Search has introduced a new feature that allows users to filter search results by Creative Commons license.

The Yahoo Search Blog offers more details. "When you use Yahoo! Image Search, you’ll now see a checkbox for Creative Commons allowing you to filter for images from Flickr that can be used commercially or that can be modified (remixed, tweaked, or built upon) with restrictions set by the image’s creator."

Yahoo says that by launching the Creative Commons license search with Flickr and making it available to all users, it is promoting reusable work while being transparent about the creator of a particular image. Yahoo says it is the first image search engine to offer the Creative Commons license.

By allowing users to search for images on Flickr, Yahoo is also driving more traffic to its own photo-sharing site. It will be interesting to see if Google tries a similar strategy with its own photo site Picasa.