JD Lasica:

"Last week I marveled at the ability of Google Images to connect people in the photographic community around the globe. Gareth Brown, head of Blow Up Studios in Wanchai, China, spotted my photo of sheep on Google Images and asked to use it in a local ad campaign in Hong Kong.

There's a kicker to the story: It turns out his client is Sony, and he has a budget for this little marketing campaign. With that as an incentive, I fed-ex'd 10 transparencies of merino sheep I took on our trip to New Zealand in 1998 to Gareth. And yesterday we agreed on a price: $500."

There's a fun web service built on top of a combination of Google and PayPal waiting to be created there. A big distributed clearinghouse of original photos might mean the death of canned stock pictures. Who will miss them?