4. How about an image search that... actually returns the URL of the raw image?
Here's a dead simple use case that is just unnecessarily frustrating. As a user, I want a high res picture of a buffalo. So:
a. I do an image search for "buffalo" and the results page contains thumbnails of buffalos.
b. I click the first result, it's tagged with "nationalgeographic.com" so it's probably gonna be good. Instead of the image, I get another page, but with a slightly bigger picture than a thumbnail. When you over over it, it says "3,072 x 3,072" but the image itself is clearly not that resolution.
c. So I click that image, and it opens a new goddamn tab of nationalgeographic.com's web site, with another picture, still not the promised 3,072 x 3,072! WTF!? When I try scrolling down to look for the raw image somewhere I'm hit with an E-mail signup-wall. Good grief!
d. Little did I know, if at step b. I instead right-clicked on the image and selected "Open Image in a new tab", I'd have gotten the image I was looking for. Thanks, Google, for hiding the 99.9% use case that people want to do.
The actual user experience should have been:
a. I do an image search for "buffalo" and the results page contains thumbnails of buffalos next to clickable .jpg links. The End.