Microsoft Office users looking for exactly the right piece of clip art to accent their presentation or document can now turn straight to the internet from their work, thanks to a new Bing-powered clip art gallery.
People who search for online images inside an Office app will now be treated to a gallery powered by Bing Images that brings in results from around the web. The search automatically looks for images that are licensed under Creative Commons and allow people to use, share and modify them for both personal and commercial use.
It’s similar to the approach taken by Seattle startup Haiku Deck, a PowerPoint alternative.
Those users who want to play things looser can also widen their search to the entire web, but those images may not be suitable for commercial use.
The update is being rolled out to Office 2013, 2010 and 2007, and will replace the existing clip art gallery entirely.
It’s a move that gives Office users access to a wider variety of more modern images they can implement in their documents without requiring them to switch between a browser and their documents. According to Microsoft’s blog post about the change, the existing clip art gallery has seen declining use as more people reach outside Office to find images on search engines, so a change makes sense.
