I write on the Internet for a living, so I know full well how much of a pain in the butt it can be to find safe, open domain images to use in articles. All you bloggers out there have probably had to deal with the same problem too, at one time or another. It can be very irksome and a little nerve-wracking to find just the right image, and it's definitely one part of the job we'd all like to do without.

Fortunately, Google feels our pain. That's why they've added an additional set of filters to their Google Image Search. Now, using the advanced image search settings, you can choose to search usage rights. Your choices are 'labelled for reuse', 'labeled for commercial reuse', 'labeled for reuse with modification', and 'labeled for commercial reuse with modification'.

Google notes that their new filters aren't perfect. It's possible that pictures are out there have been incorrectly tagged, so you still need to double-check the licensing information to make sure. Even with that caveat, this is one of the most useful features on any search engine. I'm not sure if we have the Bing/Google rivalry to thank for this, or if Google's had this feature in mind for a while. Either way, life just got a little easier for anyone who writes on the Internet.