Play With Images Using Google Image Labeler

Written by: Abhijeet Mukherjee on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
Posted to: Images
8 comments, add yours!

Google Image Labeler is a nice feature of Google’s Image Search which helps you to label different images and hence help Google to improve its image search results.

Now we know that just sitting and labeling or rating stuff can be quite boring and not many people would want to participate in such an exercise. Hence, as usual, Google brought innovation into it and decided to make a simple but cool game out of it, where you get an online partner who labels the image along with you and both of you fetch points, depending on the specific labels you provide.

When you first go to the main Google Image Labeler page, you are asked to choose a nickname (which is optional ). Thats it. You can just click on start labeling and get started immediately.

Google Image Labeler page

Once you click on it, it finds a partner for you and then you are presented with an image which you need to start labeling. There is also a stop watch running and as you type your labels, you can also see how many labels your partner has provided in that time. And the game ends when there is a match found and it shows the points earned.

Google Image Labeler

As you can see in the above image, the game stopped when a match for the picture was found and it showed the points earned. Also if you don’t want to label an image, you can pass it and it then waits for your partner to pass it too. Once he passes that, a new image is presented.

Overall its a nice time pass and also you are helping Google in the process, so that it provides you more relevant images when you search using specific keywords.

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8 Responses to “Play With Images Using Google Image Labeler”

  1. web design companyon 12 Jun 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Label different images with google image labeler.

  2. rhea - google fanon 12 Jun 2008 at 9:25 pm

    I actually play this game once in a while.

  3. The Tutoron 13 Jun 2008 at 7:40 am

    me too, it is addicting

  4. Gavinon 13 Jun 2008 at 6:48 pm

    Google are brilliantly intelligent coming up with this label tool. Get the users to help with tagging for better Google Image search results.

    Its also very addictive when bored at the office.

  5. Remixon 17 Jun 2008 at 3:49 am

    hey, this is cool, haven’t seen it before, thought this might be to label my own images – i guess the tags do that to some extent already but not as exact as a whole list of keywords.

  6. Peter Woodwardon 06 Aug 2008 at 2:23 pm

    I found that the game was very addictive and I have recently stopped playing it, however it is good to try!

  7. Beth Budwigon 03 Sep 2008 at 12:44 am

    It’s a good idea in principle – in practice, this game is horrible. The synchronicity of it means that if you get a partner who is slow or lazy (over half the time), you’re just sitting there. Far worse, is that there’s no “this image is crappy” or “this image is clearly someone’s personal or copyrighted image” button that, if clicked by both people, would remove it from search. At least 80% of the images that have come up in this “game” wouldn’t ever be of any use to anyone.

  8. Susanon 01 Oct 2008 at 12:02 am

    I enjoy Google Image Labeler, but it can be very frustrating too. It’s a mental challenge to find as many labels for a picture as you can think of, but since most players are driven by the desire to make points, they end up just entering colors if they aren’t matching their anonymous partner after a few guesses; this gives them more points, but doesn’t help in the labeling process at all (who is ever going to look up “red” to find something??). It’s also a drag when a player (and we are all anonymous, even with the cute little names we give ourselves) decides to just let the other guy go on listing his heart out, while he just keeps hitting “pass” instead of really playing. Or worse yet are the players (again, anonymous) who just want to enter obscene or racist terms instead of labels — fun for them, I suppose, in their tiny minds. I’d like to see them all banned from playing, for the sake of the serious players. The images could be sharper and larger, too; and I’d appreciate not seeing any really gross ones (and there have been many). A question: How do those top point guys make over 2000 a round?!? I’ve gotten up to 1800, but I’ve seen scores of up to 5000! HOW is that done??