Want to help Google beef up its
images index? Want to kind of have some fun in the process?
Google Image Labeler is a new pseudo-game from Google designed to add meaningful keywords to the millions of images in its index while keeping you kind of entertained. It works like this: When you start the game you're assigned a random partner. Then you and your partner are shown the same random image, for which you must enter keywords. So, if it shows you a picture of a dog, you could enter dog, pet, terrier, etc. For every keyword you enter that matches a keyword your partner entered, you get 100 points. As soon as you and your partner enter a match, you go on to the next level, and you play until the two minute timer runs out. When the game is done, you're ranked against other players. So far I haven't been able to break the top 100--success seems to depend a lot on how good your partner is (or to what degree they think like you) and how good the images you get are. Some of the images in the game are pretty challenging to identify, and "mysterious industrial structure" doesn't make a very good keyword.
It's easy to see how this benefit's Google's index: If two randomly-selected people happen to enter the same keyword for the same image, it's a pretty good bet that it's an accurate keyword for that image. This is a pretty smooth move on Google's part, harnessing the brainpower of bored Google fans to do what computers can't currently do well--glean meaningful data from images. If Google can get--and keep--enough people playing the game, it could really strengthen their image search offering.
[Via
Google Blogscoped]
After spending the better part of an hour on 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
72Wolf- said 5:25PM on 9-01-2006
Apparently not everyone speaka da engrish very well.
After 12:30pm last night, I had partners that wanted to pass on pictures of little old ladies. Pictures where "man" ended up being the matching word.
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Bryan Bartow said 5:38PM on 9-01-2006
This is nothing new. ESP Game has been doing this for a while. Interesting concept, but how do you get people to keep playing after the novelty wears off?
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Adam said 6:50PM on 9-01-2006
Well I made it to #4 and #28 overall and I'm done, look for Adam :)
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blabla said 6:26AM on 9-02-2006
they should seriously change this to allow players to select their language when they start. how i am supposed to guess when people are speaking spanish or are calling football "soccer"?
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Mustang said 7:56PM on 9-02-2006
Sounds like a great idea. I'm off to try it out for myself.
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isulong seoph said 1:10PM on 9-04-2006
It looks like google has finally noticed how poweful tagging/labeling image is, just like what Yahoo! Flickr has been doing.
But what are those earned points for? Maybe google should convert this points that players can use to keep them playing.
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