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Picsearch

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Picsearch
Company typePrivate
IndustrySearch Engine
FoundedStockholm, Sweden (2000)
Headquarters
Stockholm
,
Sweden
Productsimage search, video search, audio search
Websitewww.picsearch.com


Picsearch is a Swedish company which develops and provides image search, video search and audio search services for large websites. The image search services developed and provided by Picsearch power several major internet companies, such as Ask[1], Lycos[2], and until recently[3], MSN Search[4]. Other Picsearch customers include regional search portals in Germany[5], Turkey[6][7], the Arabic speaking world[8] and many other regions. Customer outside the sphere of search portals include telecoms, entertainment sites, e-commerce[9], sport websites, yellow pages and communities[10]. Picsearch also powers its own websites including Picsearch.com and 46 local websites.

History

Picsearch was developed and founded 1999-2000 at Linköping University by two engineering students Nils Andersson and Robert Risberg who were working on their Master of Science in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering. Their goal was to improve relevancy, create a larger index, and to introduce family friendly and spam filtered results. The company was launched in 2000 and the first public version of the image search engine was available in the September 2001, around the same time when Google launched their services.[11][12] Ditto.com was the first public image search engine and today is a licensing partner of Picsearch.[13]

Features

File:Picsearch image search fron.jpg
Picsearch home page
File:Picsearch image search boob.jpg
Picsearch search result for "boobs", showing the family-friendly filter in action

Picsearch service is slightly more expensive than Google and Yahoo, but according to many of its licensing partners, provides a higher relevance[14][15][16][17] and better family friendliness[18][19][20][21].

Coverage

Picsearch provides a searchable index of more than 1.7 billion images. Their main competitors are Google (2.2 billion images) and Yahoo (1.6 billion images).[22]

Family Friendliness

Family-friendliness implies that all sexual nudity, pornography and violence is removed by an automatic filter. Picsearch also offers an image removal service for removing indices of any single image upon request.

Localization

Picsearch services include localization features to tailor the search service to regional markets.[23][24]

Language Support

Picsearch currently supports the following languages Latin alphabet, Chinese characters, Cyrillic alphabet, Arabic alphabet, Indic scripts (Brahmic family), Korean alphabet, Greek alphabet and Hebrew Alphabet.

Environmental policy

On the 22nd of March 2007 Picsearch implemented a new environmental policy[25] making them the first carbon neutral search engine in the world[26]. Picsearch initiative has been followed by promises from Yahoo in April and Google in June to go carbon neutral by the end of 2007[27]. Their environmental policy integrates the environmental impacts in their business model creating strong and lasting incitements to reduce the green house gases[28].

The policy consists of four steps:

  • Picsearch plants 1000 new trees for every gigawatt-hour consumed.
  • Picsearch buys and holds in trust 2 acres of old growth forest for every gigawatt-hour consumed.
  • Picsearch only uses electricity that is carbon free and follows the highest standard of production.
  • Picsearch buys carbon credits equivalent to all the energy that Picsearch consumes.[29]


Censoring child pornography

In July 2007 the Swedish National Criminal Police started working with Picsearch to incorporate a special filter, which will block the visibility of 4000 websites with commercial child pornography. Introducing the filter on Picsearch and other search services, the police authorities try to make it harder for users to find child pornography.[30][31] The initiative has started an online discussion in Sweden and Japan if the police authorities are extending its powers, if the filter threatens freedom of speech and if the real reasons of introducing the filter is to deny access to other information as well.[32]

Development and patents

Picsearch has internally developed all parts of its search service including global spidering of the whole Internet, indexing of image, video and audio files and an efficient way of distributing the results to users from all parts of the world. Picsearch’s algorithms are patented in Sweden and patent-pending in the EU the United States.[33][34]

References

  1. ^ Ask Jeeves Improves Relevancy With Image Search, SearchEngineWatch. March 4, 2005. Retrieved on July 10, 2007.
  2. ^ Picsearch enters alliance with Lycos, Inc., Picsearch. May 2, 2005. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  3. ^ Chris Sherman, September 12, 2006, Microsoft Upgrades Live Search Offerings
  4. ^ Picsearch announces collaboration with MSN. Picsearch. February 21, 2005. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  5. ^ WEB.DE chooses Picsearch to power image search. Picsearch. November 9, 2006. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  6. ^ Turkish portal joins hands with Picsearch. Turkish Daily News. June 11, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  7. ^ The leading Turkish portal launches multimedia search using Picsearch. Picsearch. June 5, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  8. ^ Maktoob chooses Picsearch to power image search. Picsearch. January 17, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  9. ^ 1.7 Billion Images on Price Comparison Site. Picsearch. June 29 2006. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  10. ^ Picsearch provides image search to community-powered search engines - Swickis. Picsearch. June 13, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  11. ^ Picsearch Image Search. Internet Archive WaybackMachine . September 23, 2001. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  12. ^ Google Image Search Beta. Internet Archive WaybackMachine . June 16, 2001. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  13. ^ Ditto Image Search. Internet Archive WaybackMachine . March 1, 2000. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  14. ^ Swedish Companies Show There's More to Search Engines Than Meets the Eye. IT Sweden. June 2, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  15. ^ Picsearch provides image search to community-powered search engines - Swickis. Picsearch. June 13, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  16. ^ Getting hitched - TWERQ and Picsearch. AltSearchEngine. June 20, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  17. ^ Swedish image search engine powers Canadian Twerq. Picsearch. June 20, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  18. ^ Turkish portal joins hands with Picsearch. Turkish Daily News. June 11, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  19. ^ The leading Turkish portal launches multimedia search using Picsearch. Picsearch. June 5, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  20. ^ Maktoob chooses Picsearch to power image search. Picsearch. January 17, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  21. ^ ilse chooses Picsearch to power image search. Picsearch. October 31, 2006. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  22. ^ Google Posts New Total Size Number for Google Images. SearchEngineWatch. August 9 2005. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  23. ^ Czech Republic's most popular site launches image search using Picsearch. Picsearch. April 26, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  24. ^ Eniro chooses Picsearch to power image search. Picsearch. October 3, 2006. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  25. ^ The world’s first search engine, Picsearch. March 22, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  26. ^ Not so cool, The Times. March 31, 2007, Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  27. ^ Google jumps into green arena, International Herald Tribune. June 19, 2007, Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  28. ^ It’s not easy being green, AltSearchEngine. June 28, 2007, Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  29. ^ The world’s first search engine, Picsearch. March 22, 2007. Retrieved on July 11, 2007.
  30. ^ Police turn to web search in child porn fight. The Local. June 12, 2007. Retrieved on July 16, 2007.
  31. ^ Sökmotor hjälper Polisen spärra internetsidor. Swedish National Criminal Police. June 12, 2007. Retrieved on July 16, 2007.
  32. ^ Blogging about Picsearch. Technorati. June 12-15, 2007. Retrieved on July 16, 2007.
  33. ^ "US2006190445 Indexing of Digitized Entities". US Patent & Trademark Office. 2006-04-10. Retrieved 2007-07-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  34. ^ "US2006190445 Indexing of Digitized Entities". European Patent Office. 2006-08-24. Retrieved 2007-07-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
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