What should Google do about media metadata?
June 3, 2010The recent controversy over Google stripping image metadata has stirred up a lot of discussion over at the Controlled Vocabulary Yahoo group. Most of the group members are photographers and are rightly concerned about their data being stripped from their images.
David Riecks, moderator of the group, points to the Metadata Manifesto posted at the Stock Artists Alliance as the guiding set of principles that the industry should follow. The core guiding principles are:
- Metadata is essential to identify and track digital images.
- Ownership metadata must never be removed.
- Metadata must be written in formats that are understood by all.
Google would do well to follow these guiding principles for all media formats – not just images. Let’s hope that Google adhere’s to it’s “do no evil” mantra and preserves the metadata in derivative files.
Google can maintain metadata within images by following the specifications that have been defined by companies such as Adobe, Apple, Canon, Nokia, Microsoft and Sony – all members of the Metadata Working Group. The most recent public specification outlines how to reconcile various metadata formats within the image formats to increase metadata preservation across systems and when creating derivative files.
So, the industry guidance is there, as well as the technical steps to make it happen – what else are you waiting for Google?
What would you ask Google to do with your image metadata?
Technorati Tags: Google, media, images, search, metadata, xmp, MWG, SAA, ControlledVocabulary
If Google would just be willing to keep the Dublin Core block in XMP, e.g. SEO keywords, that would create a straight path from DAM to the web. That one change would save a load of time and translate into a more streamlined workflow and cost savings.