Life on Google
Why Google holds the key to modernity and what Madonna arms have to do with the moon landing.
We love Google. And now they’ve joined forces with another icon of our time, LIFE Magazine, to bring us something truly marvelous — LIFE’s photo archive, spanning millions of never-before-seen photos from 1750 to today.
The collection, in all its searchable glory, includes photographs of every cultural icon you can think of, be it person or place or event.
From striking Civil War images, to Times Square in its 1942 glamor, to Neil Armstrong’s legendary first steps on the moon, to Steve Jobs sporting the “Mac guy” look way back in 1981 — everything that shaped the course of history and the evolution of culture is there.
Unfortunately, something sorely missing from the archive is the ability to browse with Cooliris the way you can with normal Google Image Search. Still, this brilliant piece of cultural capital is a force to be reckoned with.
Go, reckon.
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do you think any of these images are in the public domain?
Alice,
What do you mean? They are, in the sense that they are publicly available for viewing. If you’re talking about copyright and licensing, however, I’d imagine there are all sorts of legal restrictions on their use. You can contact LIFE magazine and/or Google directly and ask, but I highly doubt they’d be copyright-free.