Why iStockphoto embraced Google's Gears

iStockphoto's Kelly Thompson

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google's Gears technology may not have caught on widely in the world of Web programming, but operators of the iStockphoto photo sales site have become believers.

Among other things, Gears enables browsers to store data on a local computer, which most notably means that Web applications can be adapted to work even while offline. But for iStockphoto's purposes, it primarily means better performance for people using the site and secondarily lower operating costs for the Getty Images photo sales subsidiary.

"We're not requiring anyone to install Google Gears," the company said on an explanatory Web site. "If you do install Google Gears, though, iStock will work much faster."

Google launched the open-source Gears software in 2007, but so far, the sites that use it--among them Gmail, Google Reader, WordPress, and MySpace--are the exception rather than the rule.

Speed and money
The main motivation for the change was getting a faster site, which benefits iStockphoto's financial results, said Kelly Thompson, iStockphoto's chief operating officer.

"It was 95 percent performance and end-user experience, but let's face it: if I can get more pictures pumped out faster, with more searches, we sell more," Thompson said. "Cutting down a page load time for a user is more valuable to me than the money I'll save on bandwidth."

The company adopted Gears with no prompting from Google, he added. "We did this on our own," with Web programmers jumping on the project because "it's sexy for them to work on it."

iStockphoto activated its Gears support September 30, Thompson said. In the first 16 days of use, Gears saved the company from paying for the transfer of 132GB of data over the network and lightened its Web servers by 8.7 million communication requests--and that's with only 19,000 Gears-installed users, a "tiny portion of our traffic," he said. Those without Gears benefit, too, since iStock's Web servers are unburdened somewhat by those who do use it.

The technology works by locally storing various Web page ingredients--photo thumbnails, JavaScript program code, Cascading Style Sheet formatting files, for example. Older files are flushed periodically so the users' hard drives don't get too cluttered.

"It's a pretty basic implementation right now: the second time a user sees any image or requests a JavaScript file, it loads instantly," Thompson said. One of his developers described it as "the opposite of a drug dealer: the first hit isn't free, (but) every subsequent hit is."

Google is trying to propagate Gears, which is available as a browser plug-in. In a more aggressive move, it built Gears into its Chrome browser. And in the longer term, the HTML5 standard under development reproduces the local storage abilities of Gears, a move that stands to spread the technology more widely.

HTML5 good, IE 6 bad
Thompson is a fan of another HTML5 technology: built-in video. iStock licenses video content, as well as photos and other content, and currently streams it with Adobe Systems' Flash technology.

"We'd love to be able to ditch Flash on the video side, but it's probably a ways out," Thompson said, citing widespread use of Internet Explorer.

IE is widely loathed among Web developers for its slow performance and lack of standards compliance, and even Microsoft wishes that people would upgrade from IE 6, but it's still the single most widely used browser out there, even though Microsoft released it in 2001, just before Windows XP arrived. Microsoft released IE 7 in 2006, and it tried to improve standards compliance and security with the release of IE 8 this March.

People are gradually shifting away from IE 6, but not fast enough for Thompson's taste--or plans.

"We announced we'd drop official support for IE 6 in 2010 back at the beginning of the year. I'm not sure we're going to be able to it: the percentage of users is dropping--just not quite fast enough," he said.

From August (top) to September (below), Internet Explorer lost a bit of usage share, compared with rival browsers.

(Credit: Net Applications)

According to Net Applications statistics, IE 6 is used by 24.4 percent of people on the Web today, followed by IE 7, IE 8, Firefox 3.5, and Firefox 3, in descending order of popularity. Overall, IE has 65.7 percent share of usage.

iStockphoto has more early adopters in its population and therefore different browser preferences. The top five browsers on the site are Firefox, with 37.8 percent; IE, with 34.4 percent; Apple's Safari, with 22.3 percent; Google's Chrome, with 3.4 percent; and Opera, with 1.7 percent.

Among iStockphoto's IE traffic, the majority of people use version 7, but the tide is turning.

"We've seen an almost 2 percent migration of (IE) 6 to 8 in the last 60 days alone. We're hoping Windows 7 will push it even more quickly," Thompson said. "For us, even though it's a shrinking percentage, it still represents over 1 million visits per month, so I can't cut them off at the knees."

"I think we're dominated by geeks, designers, and small businesses, all who move more quickly than the enterprise--not to mention we're 35 percent Mac, with the iPhone about to overtake Linux for third place" among operating systems, Thompson said.

[demner]

"iPhone about to overtake Linux for third place" among operating systems" - the most interesting part of the article.

[Shankland]

I thought that was pretty interesting too, but it doesn't surprise me too much. Linux isn't widely used as a desktop operating system outside the developer and student world, and they're not generally the types who license stock imagery.

[yours_truly_michael]

If you hate Linux and Linus Torvalds, the founder and creator of Linux, then don't watch this video:

http://www.linux.com/media-library/videos/167032-japan-linux-symposium-keynote-linus-torvalds-a-jim-zemlin

[ca5ter]

For iStockPhoto customers, which are mainly designers that are on a Mac, I don't find it surprising that Linux would loose out to an iPhone. However, I do find it very interesting that more and more people are using a smartphone platform to find photos. That is a trend I would like to know more about.

[tech_crazy]

@Shankland
Couple of objections to your statements
1) The iPhone's OS is a derivative of Linux but it is not a desktop operating system
2) What's with the special treatment for developers, students? Linux is a common desktop OS in a lot of hardware, EDA companies and may be in other industries too.

[Shankland]

@tech_crazy No, actually the iPhone doesn't use Linux, though perhaps there are bits and pieces here and there that are shared. The iPhone OS, previously known as OS X iPhone, is based on the same Darwin foundation as Mac OS X. That uses a combination of BSD Unix and a Mach microkernel, not the Linux and associated GNU software. Certainly BSD Unix and Linux share a lot philosophically and to a certain extent architecturally, but they're separate code bases and BSD got its start before Linux. And sure, there are some other niches where Linux fits in on the desktop, too.

For some background on Mac OS X and Darwin:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/darwin-dev/2009/Sep/msg00087.html

http://opensource.apple.com/

[Super2online]

I occassionally use iStockphoto, but much prefer Dreamstime. iStockphoto recently took a large chunk of their images and labeled them Vetta so they could triple the price. When that happened, I left them to go exclusively Dreamstime. Most of the same images, at a third the cost. The price per image is significantly lower and the quality is just as good for the vast majority of images.

[Shankland]

For customers, there's a balance between quality and breadth on the one hand and low price on the other. For those contributing photos, videos, etc, there's a different balance--they obviously like high payments (either through high prices or a high percentage of the fee charged) but they also like high volumes of customers.

I've wondered if there's a positive feedback loop that means the big microstock outfits get bigger and the small get smaller. There's some consolidation but I suspect there's room in the market for multiple players, in part because switching costs are low for customers.

[draiochtanois]

Less than 1% of iStock's images are in the Vetta collection. And it serves to provide a reward for more artistic images that don't sell as well as more traditional stock type images....

[Super2online]

@ draiochtanois - But have you noticed that invariably every time you find something you want, it's Vetta. Which means the best stuff, the stuff you really want commands the highest price. Many of those same images I can get elsewhere much cheaper, some I can't. I'm not saying that the best photographers don't deserve to earn more, but it's aggravating when all these same images were standard price before. I just don't believe that placing the Vetta label on them increases their value.

@ Shankland - I really enjoy the fact that you're one of the few writters here that contribute to the comments section frequently. To me it shows you place a high value on the input you receive and are willing to interact with those that take the time to provide viewpoints of interest to you. I visit writers articles more often and comment more often when that's the case.

[Shankland]

@Super2online Thanks. I enjoy the comment section. It often teaches me a thing or two. Even the Mac vs Windows religious wars sometimes raise good points if you can endure the zealotry and inanity. Of course, commenting takes time away from writing other stories, so there's an opportunity cost, but overall I hope to foster an environment where readers learn from the comments as well as from the story itself.

[austriaboarder]

@ Super2online
Sorry to further divert this discussion, but I wanted to share that there is not one single photo in the Vetta collection that can be bought anywhere else. It's strictly part of iStock's exclusivity program, which means contributors have to be exclusive to iStock to have their photos accepted to Vetta.
Sorry to hear that you're not happy with the offer though. My own experience has been much more positive, as the sort of images that Vetta seems to be inspiring are worlds beyond the work I've found in any other micro stock library. Vetta photos certainly aren't the ones I buy en masse, but when I'm looking for the best quality out there, 9 times out of 10 I can find it at iStock.

[sghanna]

Nice article man, thanks for sharing.

[baetica]

Now if only their gears scripts weren't as buggy as hell in firefox, you could actually get some work done on istockphoto

Nice article cousin stephen!

[t8]

IE is a cursed browser.

[MarkDRichards]

So, wow, a 132GB. That's what $20 on S3. Dang, great job guys!