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Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

theverge.com

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Re: Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

#81

Post by blub »

Zak wrote: post #73

I had not heard of Getty Images prior to today, but I now associate them with breaking the internet. I don't like it when people do that, so if I ever find myself in the position of needing to buy stock images, now I've heard of Getty Images and I'll make sure I pay someone else.

They're probably the most well known stock photography company out there, I don't think they'll miss your business if you hadn't even heard of them.

And they apparently own iStockPhoto and they are themselves under ownership of a large group.

Voting with one's feet works against local grocery shops, not global corporations.

Re: Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

#82

Post by nicolas_t »

psyc wrote: post #78
vortico wrote: post #34

DuckDuckGo still has this feature in their Images search, using the "View File" button. It also doesn't wrap the URL of search results in a Google redirect URL, so you can Right Click > Copy to get the actual URL of the webpage or image.

Long ago, when I still thought of Google as a good company that made good decisions for its users, I never had the impression that I'd done an exhaustive web search until I searched on Google. Now, searching Google always gives me the impression that I'm searching a heavily filtered, AI-curated subset of the web. I switched to DDG recently, and so far the results give me that impression that I'm searching 'the whole…

I love DDG but the problem is that google is still the best whenever I want to search something that's not in English or that's localized. So I still use google for that.

Re: Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

#83

Post by Logiar »

pedalpete wrote: post #7

I'm going to play devils advocate here and say this is a good change. If google was scaping the text of sites and only displaying that, would we think that was ok? Just like google search, this is about giving you a preview, then go to the source. If you want the image, we all know how to find it, get it. How big of an annoyance is this?

I'd be perfectly fine with visiting the site to get the image if there weren't tons of blog/twitter type sites where it links to the frontpage and you have to dig through years of posts to find the image you're after.

Re: Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

#84

Post by MikkoFinell »

kalleboo wrote: post #49
prepend wrote: post #33

So it’s ok for google to scrape and save images and display them without compensating photographers (which I’m cool with), but not users? This is bizarre, anti user functionality. By default if the image is available on the web, it is meant to be seen. This is going to make high school PowerPoint users spend more time, and result in zero extra revenue and zero drop in copyright infringement. The more interesting ques…

> The more interesting question is why google is doing this. They got sued. "These changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images this week."

Why not just remove the feature for pictures from Getty then, or simply not show their pictures at all? Surely that is within the technical capability of Google.

Re: Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

#87

Post by tyfon »

Ok, I will simply stop using google image search. I should probably stop using google search at all.

The only reason I actually could stand the awful image search result page was that it would let me bypass even more awful websites when looking for images.

Now they remove the only functionality I use I'll search for images somewhere else.

Re: Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

#88

Post by AnthonyMouse »

nkristoffersen wrote: post #58
ericd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all sounds like a Getty problem.

Which is why they sued. To solve that problem.

> Which is why they sued. To solve that problem.

Except that they didn't solve the problem at all, they only foisted it onto everyone else, who now have to deal with an inferior interface even when they aren't dealing with Getty images.

Re: Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

#89

Post by e12e »

danso wrote: post #30
lokopodium wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>text of sites Google does exactly that through "view cached/text only". You need to specifically opt your site out of the caching thing. I guess they could have done exactly that with images for those who complained.

The cached page often renders so poorly that that function will only be used when you really need something and the page is down (or deleted). If the content experience weren't so hit-and-miss, who wouldn't use the "view cached" option to enjoy the speed of Google's cache? There is no hit-and-miss experience with the "View image" feature -- you get access to exactly what you came looking for, and in a more convenient…

See: AMP. Although, supposedly, using the cache with AMP is "opt in" - because it's "part of" AMP.

Re: Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

#90

Post by davchana »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #57
bitmapbrother wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's right there in the article >Google has long been under fire from photographers and publishers who felt that image search allowed people to steal their pictures, and the removal of the view image button is one of many changes being made in response. A deal to show copyright information and improve attribution of Getty photos was announced last week and included these changes. Using the context menu to "Open Image…

> using the context menu to “Open Image in New tab” essentially dos the same thing so the functionality is still there. No, actually “view image” loaded the source image at source resolution while viewing the image loaded into the DOM would show you the re-encoded, lower resolution, smaller Google thumbnail version. Edit: actually it seems that Google has simultaneously deployed an update that makes the actual source…

I am not sure, but read somewhere on HN Google related article comments that what Google does is first load all image search page with own encoded compressed thumbnails, enlarged by css, and then async fetches the real images, replaces the thumbnails, and scales down by css to show as same size of thumnail.

Edit: in this exact thread, another user too made same observation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16390022

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