History of Openverse

OpenverseOpenverse Openverse is a search engine for openly-licensed media, including images and audio. Find Openverse on GitHub and at https://openverse.org., previously known as CC Search, was originally conceived as a prototype at Creative Commons.

Timeline

  • February 2017: Launched as a prototype
  • September 2018: Enters betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. with a new design and more providers
  • March 2019: Shifts focus from discovery to reuse
  • April 2019: Comes out of beta with 300M+ images
  • January 2020: Launches an extension for all major browsers
  • May 2020: Celebrates 1 year out of beta (with ‘dogs’ and ‘cats’ as top 2 queries!)
  • December 2020: Creative Commons puts the CC Search project into maintenance mode
  • May 2021: Openverse officially joins WordPress
  • To be continued…

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