Google just made downloading images very difficult
The Google signage is seen at the company's headquarters in New York January 8, 2013. Google Inc and a New York redevelopment organisation are providing a Manhattan neighbourhood with free public WiFi Internet access, making it the largest area of coverage in New York City. The search giant and the non-profit Chelsea Improvement Co are making Internet access available outdoors in Chelsea, which is home to Google's New York offices and several technology start-ups. PHOTO: REUTERS
“The Visit button remains, so users can see images in the context of the web pages they're on,” the company said in a tweet.
Getty Images had filed a complaint against Google to the European Union in 2016 stating that the search engine's images feature was promoting piracy.
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"Getty Images represents over 200,000 photojournalists, content creators and artists around the world who rely on us to protect their ability to be compensated for their work," Getty Images' General Counsel Yoko Miyashita said in a statement.
"Google's behaviour is adversely affecting not only our contributors but the lives and livelihoods of artists around the world, present, and future."
The “search by image” feature will soon be removed while you will still be able to drag and drop an image in the search bar to look for the similar images.
The Search by Image button is also being removed. Reverse image search *still works* through the way most people use it, from the search bar of Google Images.
Ultimately, Google Images is a way for people to discover information in cases where browsing images is a better experience than text. Having a single button that takes people to actionable information about the image is good for users, web publishers and copyright holders.
Some frustrated users took to Twitter to express their helplessness and anger at the loss of this feature.
The worst part is, Getty images already take you to the website if you click View Image. They already had that set up for themselves. They're just ruining it for everything else now.
Addendum: Not ruined yet. "Save image / open image in new tab" still work fine on the preview, at least for now. So this has been downgraded to "minor annoyance".
But why?
There is no reason for this.
terrible idea! 😠
I'm almost never interested in the original webpage when searching for an image; I want instead to access the image directly
I dislike this change
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While some are stating the obvious for both Google and Getty Images.
If someone wants to steal a photo they can do it without using view image. There are more advanced and easy to learn ways. Ex: on a protected site you can use inspect element to find the exact url that the image you want is being kept on and then download from there.
right click magic 😉
I know you were forced to make this decision but its very sad