Google is tapping the wisdom of crowds by inviting everyone (yes, you) to race an invisible partner online in labeling photos. If you're lucky, Google will serve you a photo of Drew Barrymore as a boxer, dressed in shorts and, um, gloves.
Here's the scoop. At the bottom of Google's image search page, there's now a little link inviting consumers to help Google improve its search results. Go to the link, and Google will match you with some stranger out in ether-space to play who can match terms to a photo the fastest. Google serves you and your online partner the same photo, you both start typing what pops into your head ... and behind the scenes, Google is recording what you and your online partner input. Any terms that you two scribe together -- for example, seeing Drew boxing, you both might cleverly type "knockout" -- go into a black box in Mountain View to help Google improve its photo search algorithms.
We tried it, and got photos of birds, planes, and Drew boxing. It's all so clever -- an online game that helps Google get smarter about how we, its customers, think when we search for photos. Thanks, Google. And thank you, Drew.
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