PicScout and Idée have long been neck-in-neck in offering image-tracking solutions and underlying image recognition technology. The latest announcement from Idée founder Leila Boujnane suggests the two companies may continue competing on another turf: online image attribution.
Idée’s image-to-image search engine TinEye is adding more than 32 million images to an index that already exceeds 1.2 billion images. The new additions include the entire iStockphoto and PhotoShelter image collections. “This is great news for photographers, image buyers and anyone interested in copyright compliance and attribution,” said Boujnane.
In a post that appears to be a counterpoint to PicScout’s recent image-registry and supporting product launches, Boujnane states: “As TinEye’s index grew, TinEye became the defacto image registry... This is what we like to call the beginning of the attribution movement.”
She stresses that TinEye connects images available for licensing to their creator and distributor. Over 500,000 people use the TinEye Firefox add-on. Idée plans to add other stock companies’ collections to its index in the near future.