LIFE magazine’s photo archive now available on Google Image Search

Google has partnered with LIFE magazine to make the entire LIFE photo archive of about 10 million photos dating back to the 1750s available for the users of its Image Search service. According to Google, the effort to bring offline images online was inspired by its mission “to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

“Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints,” Google, has said . “We are digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 per cent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.”

According to Google, users of its Image Search service will be able to access a rich full-size, full-screen version of each image from the LIFE photo archive simply by clicking on the picture itself in the landing page. “If you decide you really like one of these images, high-quality framed prints can be purchased from LIFE at the click of a button,” the company has said.