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Recently, Google & LIFE magazine partnered together to create a Google Images hosted collection of over 2 million photographs, most of which have not previously been published (plus those famously published) in the periodical since the 1860’s.
You can search the entire LIFE collection for any topic by adding “source:life” to your query, and you can give a star rating to any image in the catalog.
A simple search for skiing images turned up these gems:
Vintage Ski Lift - That thing must move as slowly as the free cocktail line in an SEO conference exhibit hall!
Apres Ski Wool Socks - These could make a cool replacement for yellow pumas;)
It's A Long Way Up - Sometimes it's a hard climb to the top of the rankings when there's stiff competition.
It’s really interesting to me that such a large catalog has been put out there by a traditional media publication, and Google claims LIFE did not pay them to do any of the indexing, nor does Google Image search give preferential ranking treatment. The magazine had to know that some of these images would run rampantly throughout the Interweb, and be shared virally on blogs like this one, forums, emails, etc. Yet of course there’s a copyright notice for Time Inc* when you click through to the landing page from a Google Image search.
But I guess Time Inc isn’t too concerned about that, or maybe they’ve accepted that this is what it takes to stay relevant in new media. Perhaps they’re banking on getting enough viral attention to the catalog to get people clicking through to buy the official prints, framed and matted at prices starting at just $79.99! Hard to know how the quality of those prints will come out, considering the age of the original media. Will be interesting to see if this is a viable revenue stream for traditional media.
*all images are Copyrighted by Time, Inc. and published jointly with Google – so as long as I’ve given proper attribution, I hope they consider this media (non-commercial) usage.
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I’d say they’re banking on staying relevant vs gaining revenue.
When I think about Life magazine, I’m thinking about their iconic images. In contrast, I can’t personally recall any compelling articles. I wonder how many people under 25 find anything about Life magazine compelling.
I’ve been enjoying this archive over a few days, originally finding a link about the Google/Life collaboration on ravelry.com. That started me looking for vintage ski sweater and hat designs, and then broadening out to skiing. The partnership has made me more open to Life magazine than I every have been before. Maybe this will lead to an eventual resurrection of the title.
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