Yahoo! introduces search for content licensed under Creative Commons

If Google has Google Scholar and Google Print programs underway, Yahoo! was not going to stay behind. They have launched a special beta version of a search engine, which indexes content like pictures, writings and other works released by sites under the Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is an organization based in San Francisco, which has created a range of protections for publishers on the Internet who do not prefer to use the traditional “all rights reserved” standards.

This let web publishers (especially bloggers) release their own content for re-publishing under certain conditions like noncommercial use only and with attribution. They also have licenses, which covers cases where parts of an artist’s work can be used by a third party in another project, which is then distributed to others. There are a total of 11 licenses on offer from Creative Commons.

There are millions of websites on the Internet, which uses one or the other of these licenses, and Yahoo’s new beta search engine would be covering all these. Yahoo! also helps the user to restrict the search results to only those pages which:
a. can be used for commercial purposes
b. can be modified, adapted, or build upon.

This can become a good source for finding information for re-publishing in web related or print media. Also, considering the fact that mostly Blogs are using Creative Commons; it can form a base for Yahoo! to develop their Blog Search Engine if they have any plans for that.

A senior Yahoo! representative said in a statement to the media: “Yahoo Search is focused on providing innovative, useful technologies that enable people to find, use, share, and expand human knowledge”. It would be interesting to watch how the competition reacts to this new initiative from the world’s second most popular search engine.