Is Google Maps Getting Flickr Photos?
Apr 27, 2009 at 2:55pm ET by Matt McGee
Our own Barry Schwartz spotted this today on Google Maps: A search for rustybrick includes a link to see Flickr photos displayed on Google Maps:
Clicking on that link leads to a fairly lengthy list of photos imported into Google Maps via the Flickr API. The photos are all from a Flickr feed that includes photos uploaded by “rustybrick,” tagged with “rustybrick,” and geotagged with the photo’s location. Barry’s feed, for example, includes photos from the RustyBrick office in New York as well as Barry’s trips to Israel.
I tried to mimic this with other searches, and the only similar instance I found was on a search for “pizza,” which included a link for data from a Platial.com feed.
Only the link/feed is broken and produces no visible results on Google Maps.
It’s possible this has been happening for some time now, but several of the SEL editors say they’d never seen it before.
What’s it all mean? If memory serves me correctly, Google has indicated — or perhaps implied — that it wants Google Maps and Google Earth to be a repository for as much geotagged information as possible, from any and all sources. This seems to be a step in that direction.
On a semi-related note, I noted last week on my own blog that Google was scraping photos and videos from across the web and putting them into local business profiles.
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Premium member since 01/2009
Those are some awesome office pictures. ;-)
Premium member since 01/2009
Very cool find. I have not been tagging photos with geo data but I’ve taken many around my neighborhood. Time to change that practice and update some fields.