23 ms·

Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results

658 points by quotemstr 9y ago

ChuckMcM 9y ago
I wonder if it was self imposed or externally mandated. Bing's image search still has it but it is behind the 'more options' ellipsis. I was always amused by the hotlinking battles where websites would substitute some other image if it was hot linked.
OscarCunningham 9y ago
I mostly used this button after I went to the page and found that the image I wanted to look at was impossible to find or shrunk really small or otherwise difficult to see. What might be better is a "jump to image on page" button.
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  That would be great, but unless there was an anchor in the html, I'm not sure how a link from the search results could do it...
TheLilHipster 9y ago
Ugh, I've been using right-click > copy image address pretty habitually everywhere else. Guess I gotta get in the habit of doing it with google images now too. Idiotic change, isn't bureaucracy great.
- acranox 9y ago
  Richer click and copy url doesn’t even work on google search results anymore. You just get the google analytics redirection crap. Bleargh.
  - gsich 9y ago
    it does work (google.de, chrome, but that shouldn't matter much)
  - rasz 9y ago
    find and install Google Tracking-B-Gone, it strips all that garbage
    - acranox 9y ago
      Neat! I wish I didn’t need browser addons for this, but maybe it’s worth checking out.
- gt_ 9y ago
  The change was not on behalf of “bureaucracy” but a market intrest. Getty is in the business of producing and selling photography. It’s all very transparent, actually. For example, when you see a group of press agents at an event (any event), at least a few of the photographers work for Getty.
nour_m 9y ago
F12 => Copy image src
malwrar 9y ago
You can still get to the original image from the results without an extension. If you select an image in the search results and right click on it, you can (in chrome at least) select "Open image in new tab" to get to the full image.
- tischler 9y ago
  But that gives you a url-encoded version of the image, not the actual URL of it, IIRC, which is sometimes annoying. Edit: It looks like they've changed it back to the actual URLs.
  - shostack 9y ago
    Yeah, that's what I thought too, but it does indeed look like they've changed it. The change is subtle, but results in not much changing for people that ultimately are just looking to grab a quick image for non-commercial purposes.
- huntermeyer 9y ago
  Does not work on mobile.
- tobyhinloopen 9y ago
  It gives a low resolution thumbnail of the image
  - malwrar 9y ago
    That's what I thought too when a friend told me this, but if you click the image to open the larger preview and right click on it ("Open image in new tab", not "open link in new tab") it will open the original image.
pedalpete 9y ago
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?
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Whatever Google does, they will be called evil for it.
- lokopodium 9y ago
  >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.
  - danso 9y ago
    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 and speedy way.
    - e12e 9y ago
      See: AMP. Although, supposedly, using the cache with AMP is "opt in" - because it's "part of" AMP.
- lambda 9y ago
  This is a huge annoyance. A lot of times I am looking for images which are in the public domain, and for which if I go to the page in question, I have to then sort through dozens of images to find the one I had been looking at already in the search. Here's an example. I've just done a search, found an image that I want to view larger, the image is long since in the public domain, but when I click on "visit" I get a page with a list of text links that I now have to sort through to find the full image: https://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.keesn.nl%2Fmac%2Fmacpics%2Fmac03vA.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.keesn.nl%2Fmac%2Fmac_en.htm&docid=YkSm_6Z4CAdrxM&tbnid=IPAqwN918ZAl1M%3A&vet=1&w=732&h=446&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim https://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kee... Edit to add: Now that I look closer, I notice that Google is actually embedding the original image, instead of a preview (they load a low-res preview, and then replace that with a hotlinked image), so you can just right click and choose "view image" now to work around this. I guess that's OK for people who are technically inclined enough to know that you can do that.
dbuder 9y ago
First the pinterest cancer, now this.
biggodoggo 9y ago
This only stops people who don't know how to "right click"
- Method-X 9y ago
  That doesn't seem to work either. If you right click and copy image address / open in new tab, the website opens and not the image itself.
  - cpncrunch 9y ago
    Still seems to be working for me, with latest chrome on macOS.
  - ac29 9y ago
    Works fine in Firefox.
  - cobookman 9y ago
    seems like google changed it to work now.
  - EamonnMR 9y ago
    I think that used to happen on some sites with the button anyway. Not sure how it's implemented but it could be as simple as: append a querystring to image URLs, and if you hit the URL without the querystring, serve a page instead.
- huntermeyer 9y ago
  Does not work on mobile.
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    Works for me with a long-press in Safari.
wincy 9y ago
There will be a Chrome extension called “Add view image button” within the next 24 hours.
- shatu29 9y ago
  You're in luck. https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/ https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/
  - gsich 9y ago
    How is this faster then "rightclick copy-address"?
- devunt 9y ago
  So I just made it for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196
PinkMilkshake 9y ago
Browser extension that restores functionality by end of the week? (At least Bing has really good image search.)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dmoy 9y ago
  Until Getty goes after Bing too, from the scant details in the article. This is why I'm scared of Twitch getting big enough to draw itself into publishers' crosshairs and have similar controls for copyright and stuff as YouTube does.
  - cobookman 9y ago
    im bullish on blockchain tech around solving this issue. No single point to sue & bully.
    - ISL 9y ago
      Just a public ledger to show exactly whom is responsible.
      - Zak 9y ago
        Suing individuals in multiple legal jurisdictions is both more technically difficult and worse PR than suing a big tech companies. There's a reason record labels gave up on that approach.
        mcintyre1994 9y ago
        If the PR was that bad couldn't they just lobby the government to enforce the criminal aspect of copyright laws against people they can prove are breaking them, and ruin people's lives that way?
  - lightbyte 9y ago
ax0ar 9y ago
I think this will lead people to search for better alternatives. Removing the core part of a major product won't do any good to google. The view page button is often broken and shows a page which doesn't even contain the searched image.
- lovelearning 9y ago
  I don't think Google likes it either. "These changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images this week."
  - ax0ar 9y ago
    Couldn't they just introduce a change that would only affect certain websites such as getty? That would be more logical than completely destroying how image search is meant to be.
    - lovelearning 9y ago
      Since the change is motivated by legal reasons, I expect logic didn't have much of a voice in the decision.
      - jenthoven 9y ago
        Right. I was a PM on Google Image Search and, from what I experienced on the team, would assume this is related to the Getty Relationship, not for users’ benefit
        y03a 9y ago
        And I assume the reason they don't just say the Getty battle is the reason for this is due to other legal concerns about libel and slander. Even if we find alternatives to Google Image search, the alternative will get stuck in the same impossible situation eventually :/
    - lambda 9y ago
cpncrunch 9y ago
Search by image is still there, in latest chrome.
prepend 9y ago
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 question is why google is doing this.
- tyingq 9y ago
  "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Google for that exact phrase and see who made that observation.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    I binged it, and it took me to this zdnet article: http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-engine-bias/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-e... So the author of that observation is Sergey Brin himself. Lel.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      I try not to overuse the reference, but "Anatomy of a Search Engine" [1] is so deliciously prescient and ironic that it's hard to avoid. It's funny how hard Sergey and Larry shifted once personal fortunes changed their motivation. [1] http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
      - blub 9y ago
        "For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors" That's basically what Google got sued for in the EU and they lost. The friendly companies were other Google properties.
vortico 9y ago
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.
- kylec 9y ago
  This might just be the thing that gets me to switch. I use "Show Image" for the image search all the time.
  - bschwindHN 9y ago
    Same! If I want an image, I'm going to get it one way or another. Might as well use a tool that doesn't actively try to get in my way. Edit: Well it seems this is from legal pressure from Getty. Unfortunately that reason isn't enough to stop me from switching.
  - GunlogAlm 9y ago
    You can still right-click -> View Image/Open image in new tab/etc., of course, but I do agree the Show Image button was handy.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - MasterScrat 9y ago
      Well no, it wouldn't be such a big deal if this was the case. If you do that you usually end up with a low-resolution image on a url of the form https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?.. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?...
      - GunlogAlm 9y ago
        Do you? I don't. I'm using google.co.uk on PC, with both Chrome and Firefox, and can always freely get the image this way. You do have to wait for the image to have fully loaded, mind, but otherwise it's quite literally embedding the image anyway - right-click, View Image, and you've got it.
tritium 9y ago
Wow, Google. Inconvenient as fuck. Put it back right away. I don’t even want to use image search anymore. Seriously fucking shitty, shitty, shitty idea. EDIT: This is the result of litigation with Getty Images? Guess who I’m boycotting. This isn’t the first time they’ve had their fingerprints on bad news.
- gkoberger 9y ago
  It's... not because they want to. Getty sued them; it's a change they're begrudgingly making.
  - tritium 9y ago
    Basically, fuck Getty Images for a number of reasons. Here’s one reason in particular: https://2600.com/print/27097 https://2600.com/print/27097
    - veidr 9y ago
      Fuck Getty Images, indeed. But thanks for sharing that awesome story!
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      That would make an interesting post by itself.
    - LocalH 9y ago
      Here's another reason. https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-lawsuit-ends-not-bang-whimper/ https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-laws...
nixpulvis 9y ago
That fucking button never worked anyway...
stonewhite 9y ago
On a somewhat related note, I recently noticed that the thumbnails and respective images in the mobile version of Google Images tab are no longer served from Google's servers, as it takes a heck of a long time for me to actually get a feedback from the site and reach to the image/source.
sid-kap 9y ago
Is this implying that people use Google Images to find webpages? I thought the only point of Google Images was to find images to use in PowerPoints and school projects.
- Zak 9y ago
  Sometimes I do, usually when I want to find a teardown or repair information for a piece of hardware. Image results often let me determine more quickly which pages contain a good teardown because they contain quality images of the inside of the device.
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  I frequently use it to search (and reverse-search) products, specifically modern interior design objects. Often things show up in blog feeds or on Instagram where it's been reblogged from some source, and I want the original page that describes what it is. Or I use image search by text to try to identify pieces that I can describe in words ("leather bauhaus lounge rocker 60s chrome" or whatever). Many other use cases. "iPhone case" -> browse cases, see one you like, find the page where it's sold (effectively a federated shopping search). Or "New England bed and breakfast" as a way to find somewhere cute to travel.
- pvdebbe 9y ago
  I often use Google Images to find actual articles to read. It happens like this: I search for a combo I'm looking for, only the pages that Google finds are not exactly about what I'm after. From the images I can see immediately if the article at least contains some relevant information for me.
- nottorp 9y ago
  I mostly use it to get links to the originals of images people post on Facebook, so I can share them further without linking to FB. I guess that makes me a dirty pirate stealing FB's ad revenue...
TOLATS 9y ago
Thank you all. As one of the people out there not technically inclined enough to not freak out, when stuff I'm used to changes in unhelpful ways - This discussion has brought me a few great suggestions, a new view image tool, and most of all, hope. Cheers.
Zak 9y ago
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.
- blub 9y ago
  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.
  - gatmne 9y ago
    You can add my business to GP's. I'm currently in the market for stock photos. The allotted budget isn't one those folk would miss, but it's more than enough to commission our own. As a direct response to getty's behavior, I'll be commissioning the photos and making them available under a free license after around a year of use. It's also very unlikely that I'll be doing business with them in the future. >Voting with one's feet works against local grocery shops, not global corporations. It isn't as much of vote with my feet as it is adhering to one's own principles. Also, thank you for mentioning istockphoto relationship with getty. I'll avoid them in the future as well.
- bootlooped 9y ago
  It's really just a minor inconvenience right? I wouldn't call it breaking the internet.
  - Zak 9y ago
    The intent is to break things for at least a fraction of users, or there would be no point in doing it at all.
tyfon 9y ago
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.
jakubp 9y ago
Quotes from @searchliaison: "Today we're launching some changes on Google Images to help connect users and useful websites." "Ultimately, Google Images is a way for people to discover information in cases where browsing images is a better experience than text." Do you believe any of these statements? I am still surprised how easily corporations will hide their true motives, resolve any cognitive dissonance internally, and how easily others will forgive them. I wonder how people within Google are feeling when this happens. And I don't mean "when a feature gets removed", there may be valid reasons to do that. But when the official communication about them contains manipulative statements such as above, how do employees who aren't allowed to speak up feel?
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Any horrible task can be split up and thus be made more fullfillable by the human employed in the process. Lets assume for example, google found some Xenomorphs on the moon- which needed a human host to be transfered to a research lab in moutain view. Instead of having one person do it, the task will be split up. There is one doctor making sure the human hosts are fine. There is a transport pilot flying the human hosts to the moon. ... There is a grief counselor contacting the hosts familys. There is another transport pilot flying them home. Finally there is one person who designs the process, not knowing exactly what will be extracted. And of course a person who tells a nice PR-lie. Its the same distribution of organization that made Auschwitz run so well. Now repeat after me- do not be evil.
  - rsync 9y ago
    "Any horrible task can be split up and thus be made more fullfillable by the human employed in the process." I think you're onto something here but I think there is a detail you've missed - hierarchy. It's not the number of people involved that allows a a terrible process to be completed but rather the number of layers of hierarchy. Someone at the top says "just make this (outcome) happen" and if they say that to the person who actually has to carry it out, there is pushback or guilt or exposure. But if that person can, in turn, tell someone else a level below to "just make this (outcome) happen" eventually there is enough insulation (emotional, legal, etc.) that someone at the end of the chain can get the shaft. You can't really do that with a flat (absent) hierarchy.
chrisper 9y ago
I am more and more annoyed by Google. I actually started to move all my stuff over to alternatives or self hosted stuff. At first I was hesitant because a lot of Google products cannot be beat feature and price wise. But the true cost is that Google gains power if more and more people use something...
throwaway2483 9y ago
This is unfortunate. Now I’ll have to right + “Open original image in new tab” in order to infringe
therealmarv 9y ago
Solution for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/straight-to-full-size-for/ghhmhdkbiodiengmhbbpjkcjodingned https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/straight-to-full-s... Chrome Extension "Straight to Full-Size for Google Images"
- MasterScrat 9y ago
  Thanks! this fully solves the problem.
- andrew_ 9y ago
  excellent find, but there's valuable data in those previews; namely the size of the original image. especially useful when trying to find a particular image of a particular size. unfortunately that extension bypasses the preview.
  - therealmarv 9y ago
    yes I agree, sometimes you really want that information. I recommend you turn it off (it's a one click in the toolbar) if you want to information or use the bookmarklet recommended here.
- riskable 9y ago
  Solution for the (much faster than Chrome now) Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-image-view-image-button/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-image-...
therealmarv 9y ago
Also worth mentioning as alternative: Use startpage.com image search or Duckduckgo image search. Startpage is superior... even proxies images often through their server. By the way: They filter less explicit content than Google does (Google is pro active making image search SFW and for me this is censoring).
tobyhinloopen 9y ago
Omg how do I get stock images & icons for my applications now?! /jk
- Sylos 9y ago
  Yeah, that's the biggest joke about this. Those who have an actual financial interest in not paying for stock images etc. are generally people who understand computers and basically will just have to do two clicks more than before, which is still absolutely worth doing compared to paying for the image. People trying to just grab whatever free image off the internet as well as cases of fair use are where this change is going to cause the most hindrance.
mrighele 9y ago
While I understand the reason Google did it (because of lawsuits), this is very annoying, and I mean in general: you don't know how or if you can use a resource you fetch from a website even if its robots.txt allows you to fetch it. This is in fact an even bigger deal for small companies than for Google, since the latter already reached a size where it can manage the issue somehow. It would be nice to have a version of robots.txt that states (in a predefined format) the license under which the resource is available. That way you could know right away what you can and you can not do with it.
littlestymaar 9y ago
Duckduckgo still has this feature ;). Yet another feature it has that Google doesn't.
egeozcan 9y ago
Image and html files are all documents on the web. Well at least they used to be. If you put an image on the web, you must expect people to be able to view it also without context.
- bartread 9y ago
  Actually hot-linking in that way is often considered bad form because it can incur bandwidth costs, sometimes significant, for the image host.
  - egeozcan 9y ago
    You can decide to not serve them, looking at the referrer. Wanting your image to show up in image search results but not wanting it to be directly opened is trying to keep the cake and eat it at the same time.
  - exodust 9y ago
    If the same amount of people visited the page containing that image, bandwidth would be a lot more with all the page content loading up. Is there good bandwidth and bad bandwidth? Image author can embed watermarks, credits, branding into images. Make use of the fact the image is out there.
bornonline1 9y ago
Next step - block on copying text
fishmeat 9y ago
SOO, Is there a browser add-on for me to fix this? I'm still using DuckDuckGo as main though.
underwater 9y ago
On the plus side the mobile version of Google Images no longer breaks horribly when I try to zoom into an image. That’s a big usability win.
testplzignore 9y ago
On Firefox Mobile, there's still a "Full-size image" button. Hopefully nobody at Google or Getty reads this comment :)
napa15 9y ago
The kinds of things that people get outraged over nowadays is amazing, holy cow. I always thought that it was very unfair for people to be able to see your images on google in full quality without even having to visit your website at all. But more than that.. it's a tiny extra step. 210 upvotes, 126 comments for this? I wouldnt even give this a thought if it wasnt for this weird interest here. I count this a step into the right direction, maybe they'll fix AMP too and make it into a checkmark that gets applied in the search results if your website fulfills certain speed requirements.
pluma 9y ago
If memory serves well, this wasn't ever possible on mobile devices in the first place. Countless times I've googled an image of something I want to show someone, found a result, clicked on it to zoom in (because the image search result page doesn't support zoom) and ended up on a page that doesn't even contain the image itself. I'm not sure what limitations were the rationale for not providing this option on mobile but selling this change as an improvement is ridiculous -- especially when it was made to avoid (more) legal issues.
- swiley 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure it was but the button to do it was some weird icon rather than text like on a desktop.
swiley 9y ago
Finding sheet music just got even harder. Thanks Google^H^H^H^H^H^H Getty.
icebreaker 9y ago
Google's "image search" has been completely destroyed by Pinterest anyway. In that vein, this doesn't make much of a difference.
- tux1968 9y ago
  I'm curious, in what way? I can not look at any Pinterest content because I don't have an account with them. Figured most people would relent and sign up -- but perhaps this is the problem you were talking about?
  - whywhywhywhy 9y ago
    Pintrest spams Image Search results with bogus results and uses them as the top of their funnel. You click a Pintrest image unsuspectingly, Pintrest takes you to a vaguely relevant board the image is contained on, but you can't get to the image because a signup lightbox blocks the content. This has wider implications because using reverse image search wont point you to the original images either anymore it'll mostly point to Pintrest results and therefore Pintrests signup form.
    - bootlooped 9y ago
      Have you tried using search operators to exclude results from Pintrest?
Disruptive_Dave 9y ago
Wish they had kept this functionality when you choose to utilize the "Usage Rights -> Labeled for reuse" filter under Tools.
invalidusernam3 9y ago
This wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the existence of Pinterest.
Grue3 9y ago
IME very often the image in question is already unreachable from the page Google found it on (because of stuff like pagination). This button was a lifesaver.
krick 9y ago
So, how do I, as a user, get back at the Getty Images?
- kislotnik 9y ago
  If you're a photographer - upload your stuff to unsplash. Free high-quality content for casual use is something getty can't compete with, leaving them only with specialized markets (olympics photography etc)
ohiovr 9y ago
Not going to be a problem for me since I use Searx on my own domain.
anonytrary 9y ago
Google is reasserting their web-search monopoly and reaffirming their interest in gated communities. Are they trying to follow in the footsteps of Facebook? I mean, Google is an actual useful tool (e.g. maps, search, mail... unlike Facebook which is nothing short of a Ponzi scheme where you pay in secrets and mental health) so I can't really hate it, but this is just plain annoying. Will they store full-size copies on their servers, or do they reduce the dimensionality before storing in the cache?
anonytrary 9y ago
The fact that Getty images won the lawsuit is strange. If Google images is better and is more used than Getty, then Getty should have been killed by the free market long ago. It seems such a ruling is keeping them afloat for reasons beyond that of the efficacy of their service.
devunt 9y ago
I made a possible solution here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196 It adds back "View Image" button to Google Image Search results.
- andrew_ 9y ago
  well done!
Giorgi 9y ago
Well, that's why I clicked "Save" multiple times, till I realized what was going on. I guess "Open image in new tab" will get more work now. Google fucked up big time.
Renee-Helten 9y ago
The information is useful, Thanks for sharing
myf01d 9y ago
there goes my porn image search experience
everyone 9y ago
I finally completely switched over to duck duck go, only a few days ago. The google doodle with autoplaying audio is what drove me over the edge. (ddg is grand btw, ive barely noticed)
- exodust 9y ago
  I noticed the auto-playing audio too, and I think it may have caused lag in how quickly focus was given to the search field on page load. On typing my search query, the first two or so letters of what I was typing would not appear, and I think their google doodle was causing this bug. The problem went away when they changed the artwork.
- jressey 9y ago
  Yes, I had a love affair with DDG for years but switched for good about 6 months ago. The only thing I went to Google for was a better image search with non-specific search terms. This move will prevent me from doing that any longer.
- y03a 9y ago
  I really hope they don't follow suit on this.
z3t4 9y ago
The only problem is that 90% of the time the image is removed from the site ! The image is often still hosted, but has been removed from the page content. This is very annoying! So the next step for Google is to actually make sure the site still has the image before including it in the search results. btw Text search has the same problem, but is less annoying because we are so used to web sites not having the info and will just continue searching. It's extra annoying with images because we then actually knows it has the image we are looking for, but then it has not. It's like when the information I look for comes up in the site description, but when I visit the site it's not there. I guess this is a hard problem to solve, but would improve the search experience a lot. One idea is to have the browser fetch the site content and do a full text search on it before it's displayed in the search result. Could be done with a browser extension.
- akerro 9y ago
  >The image is often still hosted, but has been removed from the page content. The same applies to web searches, >So the next step for Google is to actually make sure the site still has the image before including it in the search results. And they should do the same for videos and DDoS the whole Internet just for 0.004% of chances making minor manual action a bit inconvenient.
  - z3t4 9y ago
    You are arguing to save a minor amount of bandwidth VS saving thousands of man-hours.
    - akerro 9y ago
      >save a minor amount of bandwidth I dont think that's minor: https://www.cnet.com/news/google-goes-down-for-5-minutes-internet-traffic-drops-40/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-goes-down-for-5-minutes-int... now imagine google has to check if every link it will show still exists. That's like billions of trillions of request per hour world-wide. And another thing is a privacy issue, I know, google doesnt give a shit about it, but some people do. Think that you search for 'smelly poo' and 10 different servers get HEAD request to articles that are top ranked in this keyword, potentially 9 of the servers won't get a human-made visit, 9 sysadmins or developers will find a way to abuse that metadata in the future.
shmerl 9y ago
Copyright stupidity trumps usability, as usual.
ashtube 9y ago
This feature was the main contributor to our 80% traffic loss when I was running a news aggregator, we had so much Image traffic. Now they remove it 5 years later. I welcome the change. Too late for me though.
EamonnMR 9y ago
Pinterest has already ruined my google image search experience. They "aggregate" content from other sites that I'd actually want to read, strip them of any context, and package them up with other images behind a login wall.
- riskable 9y ago
  No kidding! You used to be able to personalize your Google search results to blacklist pinterest.com but they removed that feature a while back. Now you have to type out -site:pinterest.com every single time you want to search for something or install an add-on like: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-blocklist/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-bloc... It's seriously annoying that they had a feature that solved the problem then they took it away. Just like removing the "View Image" button.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  This is the worst for circuit diagrams. "Great, a couple of transistors and resistors, an 8-pin IC - that looks about right. Let's just see how it works, and...oh. Nope, it's just that image, with no part numbers. And nothing else." I can only guess that some people use it as a half-assed whiteboard to remember links and stuff, and Google picks up on that. The ironic problem for Google is, the 'pin' replaces the actual useful content which the Pinterest users were originally hoping to remember for later access!
btbuildem 9y ago
A browser plugin that brings this back is going to pop up in a day? Two?
sam0x17 9y ago
Google keeps giving us more and more reasons for us to replace it with something better that actually serves the needs of users. I should get coding ;)
jacquesm 9y ago
Click image, right click, choose menu option 'view image'.
- volkk 9y ago
  This is for Firefox. "Copy Image Address" for Chrome.
S_A_P 9y ago
The web is a lousy platform for keeping your images secure, I would like to know if the folks at Getty thought they were scoring a huge coup with this...
gapipro1 9y ago
Here is a Chrome Extension that adds back View Image button: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button-for-goo/jfjcobdgpgnlhbibdbobbplehgkmjdni https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button-...
- SimeVidas 9y ago
  Confirmed works in Firefox (Nightly) via the “Chrome Store Foxified” add-on (which lets you install Chrome extensions) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-...
kasperset 9y ago
At least on iPhone, one can view images using 3D touch. I guess long press should do the trick on other touch devices??
LoSboccacc 9y ago
The transition toward the Narrow Walled Web is almost complete, one lawsuit at a time. The last two decades were a blast, so long and thanks for all the fishes.
smpetrey 9y ago
Bookmark Applet: https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/ https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/
madisfun 9y ago
Search engines which still allow to open images directly: DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+ceo&t=hg&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+ceo&t=hg&iax=images&ia=imag... Bing: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Google+Ceo https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Google+Ceo Qwant: https://www.qwant.com/?q=google%20ceo&t=images https://www.qwant.com/?q=google%20ceo&t=images Yandex: https://yandex.com/images/search?text=google%20ceo https://yandex.com/images/search?text=google%20ceo
danjoc 9y ago
I would use DDG for image searches, but it doesn't want to work without javascript. In fact, images.duckduckgo.com seems to block duckduckgo.com in robots.txt. It's kinda a disaster, https://imgur.com/a/jkTvY https://imgur.com/a/jkTvY
LocalH 9y ago
Fuck Getty. They claim licensing rights over public domain images, and then tell the original copyright holder (who placed the image in the public domain) to fuck off. https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-lawsuit-ends-not-bang-whimper/ https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-laws...
- bshacklett 9y ago
  Unfortunately this seems like a good reason to never release something to the public domain, but only with something like a creative commons license. If she'd done that, she likely would have retained some control and possibly won that law suit. IP law in the US hasn't functioned as intended for a very long time now. People seem to be starting to pick up on that more. I can only hope that continues and we eventually see some real reform.
- ahakki 9y ago
  The work was in the public domain, which means anyone can do anything with it, including selling it. The original copyright holder has no more rights than anyone else once the work is in the public domain (thats kinda the point of it). This lawsuit was really rather pointless.
FussyZeus 9y ago
While we're at it can they add a feature where "-pinterest" is added to every image search by default, and then can be removed? Pinterest Image results are like barnacles, almost universally useless and they cover every search.
oldpond 9y ago
Just like TV. I can see the images, but I can't have them. Good thing they don't own the view button, and there are other search engines. Google is so evil now.
zeveb 9y ago
My knee-jerk reäction was to hate this, but then I realised that one can still view the image with Firefox's 'View Image' menu item. I think I'd rather use the browser's built-in UI to do it anyway, so no big deal.
rocky1138 9y ago
I noticed this yesterday. Totally ruins the product and makes it completely useless.
rocky1138 9y ago
Next step: disabling "view source" in Chrome.
jaysonelliot 9y ago
Image search is one place where Bing actually beats Google. Their results are nearly always better, I personally prefer their UI, and now they have the advantage of supporting this simple yet valuable feature. It will probably take me some time to lose my muscle memory that leads me to Google's image search and get used to going to Bing instead, but this was a great catalyst for me to start changing my habits.
- nxc18 9y ago
  It has been for a long time, too. Bing lead Google on image search features for a solid 5 years (at least) before google made an attempt to catch up. Now Google is losing features, although I wonder if Bing will need to do similar things for compliance? Either way, check out their video search as well, you won’t be disappointed.
- jayd16 9y ago
  So what's stopping Getty images or anyone else from going after Bing next?
- Havoc 9y ago
  >Image search is one place where Bing actually beats Google. Video search too in some sub-domains.
xylon 9y ago
Google search has always been successful because it was the best. Seems they don't want to be the best anymore.
rconti 9y ago
Google image search has been anti-user ever since they switched to their new UI 5 or so years ago. It's just utterly terrible in every way. Just another step in that direction.
ghrifter 9y ago
Prevents hotlinking, which I guess is nice and bad at the same time.
nchernykh 9y ago
I just made a quick chrome extension to bring it BACK. Vote up so more ppl can test it:) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button/cjdkhbdkblglaigekppkennaagbcbimb?authuser=1 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button/...
CivBase 9y ago
I get that Google made this change to settle with Getty Images - and I have some gripes about the PR-speak and implementation on Google's behalf - but I keep coming back to the same question. What grounds does Getty even have in a case like that? Getty offered the images up on the public domain. Why does Google have any obligation to direct them to a webpage instead of the image itself? Isn't that Getty's problem? The "view image" button sent users to Getty's own servers, so why should Google take any heat over a feature Getty supports? I think it's much shadier that Google is hosting copies of those copyrighted images for use in their own search tool, but this settlement does nothing to resolve that. That Verge article even posited a workaround which just uses the Goolge-hosted copy of the image! Isn't this the kind of stuff Google has invested millions of dollars into copyright-detection AI to avoid? And wouldn't images like that be covered by the DMCA anyways? I obviously don't have any legal experience and copyright law is a nightmare, but I don't understand why Google would have make any compromises here aside from complying with DMCA requests.
hokus 9y ago
make it harder to steal images? for what? do people put them on their website? Isn't that what google is doing?
ishjindal 9y ago
Bring back the view image button with this chrome extension - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bring-google-view-image-back https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bring-google-view-image-ba...

658 points by quotemstr 9y ago

I wonder if it was self imposed or externally mandated. Bing's image search still has it but it is behind the 'more options' ellipsis. I was always amused by the hotlinking battles where websites would substitute some other image if it was hot linked.

OscarCunningham 9y ago

I mostly used this button after I went to the page and found that the image I wanted to look at was impossible to find or shrunk really small or otherwise difficult to see. What might be better is a "jump to image on page" button.

blacksmith_tb 9y ago
That would be great, but unless there was an anchor in the html, I'm not sure how a link from the search results could do it...

TheLilHipster 9y ago

Ugh, I've been using right-click > copy image address pretty habitually everywhere else. Guess I gotta get in the habit of doing it with google images now too. Idiotic change, isn't bureaucracy great.

acranox 9y ago
Richer click and copy url doesn’t even work on google search results anymore. You just get the google analytics redirection crap. Bleargh.
- gsich 9y ago
  it does work (google.de, chrome, but that shouldn't matter much)
- rasz 9y ago
  find and install Google Tracking-B-Gone, it strips all that garbage
  - acranox 9y ago
    Neat! I wish I didn’t need browser addons for this, but maybe it’s worth checking out.
gt_ 9y ago
The change was not on behalf of “bureaucracy” but a market intrest. Getty is in the business of producing and selling photography. It’s all very transparent, actually. For example, when you see a group of press agents at an event (any event), at least a few of the photographers work for Getty.

nour_m 9y ago

F12 => Copy image src

malwrar 9y ago

You can still get to the original image from the results without an extension. If you select an image in the search results and right click on it, you can (in chrome at least) select "Open image in new tab" to get to the full image.

tischler 9y ago
But that gives you a url-encoded version of the image, not the actual URL of it, IIRC, which is sometimes annoying. Edit: It looks like they've changed it back to the actual URLs.
- shostack 9y ago
  Yeah, that's what I thought too, but it does indeed look like they've changed it. The change is subtle, but results in not much changing for people that ultimately are just looking to grab a quick image for non-commercial purposes.
huntermeyer 9y ago
Does not work on mobile.
tobyhinloopen 9y ago
It gives a low resolution thumbnail of the image
- malwrar 9y ago
  That's what I thought too when a friend told me this, but if you click the image to open the larger preview and right click on it ("Open image in new tab", not "open link in new tab") it will open the original image.

pedalpete 9y ago

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?

fjsolwmv 9y ago
Whatever Google does, they will be called evil for it.
lokopodium 9y ago
>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.
- danso 9y ago
  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 and speedy way.
  - e12e 9y ago
    See: AMP. Although, supposedly, using the cache with AMP is "opt in" - because it's "part of" AMP.
lambda 9y ago
This is a huge annoyance. A lot of times I am looking for images which are in the public domain, and for which if I go to the page in question, I have to then sort through dozens of images to find the one I had been looking at already in the search. Here's an example. I've just done a search, found an image that I want to view larger, the image is long since in the public domain, but when I click on "visit" I get a page with a list of text links that I now have to sort through to find the full image: https://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.keesn.nl%2Fmac%2Fmacpics%2Fmac03vA.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.keesn.nl%2Fmac%2Fmac_en.htm&docid=YkSm_6Z4CAdrxM&tbnid=IPAqwN918ZAl1M%3A&vet=1&w=732&h=446&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim https://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kee... Edit to add: Now that I look closer, I notice that Google is actually embedding the original image, instead of a preview (they load a low-res preview, and then replace that with a hotlinked image), so you can just right click and choose "view image" now to work around this. I guess that's OK for people who are technically inclined enough to know that you can do that.

dbuder 9y ago

First the pinterest cancer, now this.

biggodoggo 9y ago

This only stops people who don't know how to "right click"

Method-X 9y ago
That doesn't seem to work either. If you right click and copy image address / open in new tab, the website opens and not the image itself.
- cpncrunch 9y ago
  Still seems to be working for me, with latest chrome on macOS.
- ac29 9y ago
  Works fine in Firefox.
- cobookman 9y ago
  seems like google changed it to work now.
- EamonnMR 9y ago
  I think that used to happen on some sites with the button anyway. Not sure how it's implemented but it could be as simple as: append a querystring to image URLs, and if you hit the URL without the querystring, serve a page instead.
huntermeyer 9y ago
Does not work on mobile.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  Works for me with a long-press in Safari.

wincy 9y ago

There will be a Chrome extension called “Add view image button” within the next 24 hours.

shatu29 9y ago
You're in luck. https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/ https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/
- gsich 9y ago
  How is this faster then "rightclick copy-address"?
devunt 9y ago
So I just made it for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196

PinkMilkshake 9y ago

Browser extension that restores functionality by end of the week? (At least Bing has really good image search.)

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dmoy 9y ago
Until Getty goes after Bing too, from the scant details in the article. This is why I'm scared of Twitch getting big enough to draw itself into publishers' crosshairs and have similar controls for copyright and stuff as YouTube does.
- cobookman 9y ago
  im bullish on blockchain tech around solving this issue. No single point to sue & bully.
  - ISL 9y ago
    Just a public ledger to show exactly whom is responsible.
    - Zak 9y ago
      Suing individuals in multiple legal jurisdictions is both more technically difficult and worse PR than suing a big tech companies. There's a reason record labels gave up on that approach.
      - mcintyre1994 9y ago
        If the PR was that bad couldn't they just lobby the government to enforce the criminal aspect of copyright laws against people they can prove are breaking them, and ruin people's lives that way?
- lightbyte 9y ago

ax0ar 9y ago

I think this will lead people to search for better alternatives. Removing the core part of a major product won't do any good to google. The view page button is often broken and shows a page which doesn't even contain the searched image.

lovelearning 9y ago
I don't think Google likes it either. "These changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images this week."
- ax0ar 9y ago
  Couldn't they just introduce a change that would only affect certain websites such as getty? That would be more logical than completely destroying how image search is meant to be.
  - lovelearning 9y ago
    Since the change is motivated by legal reasons, I expect logic didn't have much of a voice in the decision.
    - jenthoven 9y ago
      Right. I was a PM on Google Image Search and, from what I experienced on the team, would assume this is related to the Getty Relationship, not for users’ benefit
      - y03a 9y ago
        And I assume the reason they don't just say the Getty battle is the reason for this is due to other legal concerns about libel and slander. Even if we find alternatives to Google Image search, the alternative will get stuck in the same impossible situation eventually :/
  - lambda 9y ago

cpncrunch 9y ago

Search by image is still there, in latest chrome.

prepend 9y ago

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 question is why google is doing this.

tyingq 9y ago
"The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Google for that exact phrase and see who made that observation.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  I binged it, and it took me to this zdnet article: http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-engine-bias/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-e... So the author of that observation is Sergey Brin himself. Lel.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    I try not to overuse the reference, but "Anatomy of a Search Engine" [1] is so deliciously prescient and ironic that it's hard to avoid. It's funny how hard Sergey and Larry shifted once personal fortunes changed their motivation. [1] http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
    - blub 9y ago
      "For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors" That's basically what Google got sued for in the EU and they lost. The friendly companies were other Google properties.

vortico 9y ago

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.

kylec 9y ago
This might just be the thing that gets me to switch. I use "Show Image" for the image search all the time.
- bschwindHN 9y ago
  Same! If I want an image, I'm going to get it one way or another. Might as well use a tool that doesn't actively try to get in my way. Edit: Well it seems this is from legal pressure from Getty. Unfortunately that reason isn't enough to stop me from switching.
- GunlogAlm 9y ago
  You can still right-click -> View Image/Open image in new tab/etc., of course, but I do agree the Show Image button was handy.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - MasterScrat 9y ago
    Well no, it wouldn't be such a big deal if this was the case. If you do that you usually end up with a low-resolution image on a url of the form https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?.. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?...
    - GunlogAlm 9y ago
      Do you? I don't. I'm using google.co.uk on PC, with both Chrome and Firefox, and can always freely get the image this way. You do have to wait for the image to have fully loaded, mind, but otherwise it's quite literally embedding the image anyway - right-click, View Image, and you've got it.

tritium 9y ago

Wow, Google. Inconvenient as fuck. Put it back right away. I don’t even want to use image search anymore. Seriously fucking shitty, shitty, shitty idea. EDIT: This is the result of litigation with Getty Images? Guess who I’m boycotting. This isn’t the first time they’ve had their fingerprints on bad news.

gkoberger 9y ago
It's... not because they want to. Getty sued them; it's a change they're begrudgingly making.
- tritium 9y ago
  Basically, fuck Getty Images for a number of reasons. Here’s one reason in particular: https://2600.com/print/27097 https://2600.com/print/27097
  - veidr 9y ago
    Fuck Getty Images, indeed. But thanks for sharing that awesome story!
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    That would make an interesting post by itself.
  - LocalH 9y ago
    Here's another reason. https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-lawsuit-ends-not-bang-whimper/ https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-laws...

nixpulvis 9y ago

That fucking button never worked anyway...

stonewhite 9y ago

On a somewhat related note, I recently noticed that the thumbnails and respective images in the mobile version of Google Images tab are no longer served from Google's servers, as it takes a heck of a long time for me to actually get a feedback from the site and reach to the image/source.

sid-kap 9y ago

Is this implying that people use Google Images to find webpages? I thought the only point of Google Images was to find images to use in PowerPoints and school projects.

Zak 9y ago
Sometimes I do, usually when I want to find a teardown or repair information for a piece of hardware. Image results often let me determine more quickly which pages contain a good teardown because they contain quality images of the inside of the device.
lobster_johnson 9y ago
I frequently use it to search (and reverse-search) products, specifically modern interior design objects. Often things show up in blog feeds or on Instagram where it's been reblogged from some source, and I want the original page that describes what it is. Or I use image search by text to try to identify pieces that I can describe in words ("leather bauhaus lounge rocker 60s chrome" or whatever). Many other use cases. "iPhone case" -> browse cases, see one you like, find the page where it's sold (effectively a federated shopping search). Or "New England bed and breakfast" as a way to find somewhere cute to travel.
pvdebbe 9y ago
I often use Google Images to find actual articles to read. It happens like this: I search for a combo I'm looking for, only the pages that Google finds are not exactly about what I'm after. From the images I can see immediately if the article at least contains some relevant information for me.
nottorp 9y ago
I mostly use it to get links to the originals of images people post on Facebook, so I can share them further without linking to FB. I guess that makes me a dirty pirate stealing FB's ad revenue...

TOLATS 9y ago

Thank you all. As one of the people out there not technically inclined enough to not freak out, when stuff I'm used to changes in unhelpful ways - This discussion has brought me a few great suggestions, a new view image tool, and most of all, hope. Cheers.

Zak 9y ago

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.

blub 9y ago
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.
- gatmne 9y ago
  You can add my business to GP's. I'm currently in the market for stock photos. The allotted budget isn't one those folk would miss, but it's more than enough to commission our own. As a direct response to getty's behavior, I'll be commissioning the photos and making them available under a free license after around a year of use. It's also very unlikely that I'll be doing business with them in the future. >Voting with one's feet works against local grocery shops, not global corporations. It isn't as much of vote with my feet as it is adhering to one's own principles. Also, thank you for mentioning istockphoto relationship with getty. I'll avoid them in the future as well.
bootlooped 9y ago
It's really just a minor inconvenience right? I wouldn't call it breaking the internet.
- Zak 9y ago
  The intent is to break things for at least a fraction of users, or there would be no point in doing it at all.

tyfon 9y ago

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.

jakubp 9y ago

Quotes from @searchliaison: "Today we're launching some changes on Google Images to help connect users and useful websites." "Ultimately, Google Images is a way for people to discover information in cases where browsing images is a better experience than text." Do you believe any of these statements? I am still surprised how easily corporations will hide their true motives, resolve any cognitive dissonance internally, and how easily others will forgive them. I wonder how people within Google are feeling when this happens. And I don't mean "when a feature gets removed", there may be valid reasons to do that. But when the official communication about them contains manipulative statements such as above, how do employees who aren't allowed to speak up feel?

Pica_soO 9y ago
Any horrible task can be split up and thus be made more fullfillable by the human employed in the process. Lets assume for example, google found some Xenomorphs on the moon- which needed a human host to be transfered to a research lab in moutain view. Instead of having one person do it, the task will be split up. There is one doctor making sure the human hosts are fine. There is a transport pilot flying the human hosts to the moon. ... There is a grief counselor contacting the hosts familys. There is another transport pilot flying them home. Finally there is one person who designs the process, not knowing exactly what will be extracted. And of course a person who tells a nice PR-lie. Its the same distribution of organization that made Auschwitz run so well. Now repeat after me- do not be evil.
- rsync 9y ago
  "Any horrible task can be split up and thus be made more fullfillable by the human employed in the process." I think you're onto something here but I think there is a detail you've missed - hierarchy. It's not the number of people involved that allows a a terrible process to be completed but rather the number of layers of hierarchy. Someone at the top says "just make this (outcome) happen" and if they say that to the person who actually has to carry it out, there is pushback or guilt or exposure. But if that person can, in turn, tell someone else a level below to "just make this (outcome) happen" eventually there is enough insulation (emotional, legal, etc.) that someone at the end of the chain can get the shaft. You can't really do that with a flat (absent) hierarchy.

chrisper 9y ago

I am more and more annoyed by Google. I actually started to move all my stuff over to alternatives or self hosted stuff. At first I was hesitant because a lot of Google products cannot be beat feature and price wise. But the true cost is that Google gains power if more and more people use something...

throwaway2483 9y ago

This is unfortunate. Now I’ll have to right + “Open original image in new tab” in order to infringe

therealmarv 9y ago

Solution for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/straight-to-full-size-for/ghhmhdkbiodiengmhbbpjkcjodingned https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/straight-to-full-s... Chrome Extension "Straight to Full-Size for Google Images"

MasterScrat 9y ago
Thanks! this fully solves the problem.
andrew_ 9y ago
excellent find, but there's valuable data in those previews; namely the size of the original image. especially useful when trying to find a particular image of a particular size. unfortunately that extension bypasses the preview.
- therealmarv 9y ago
  yes I agree, sometimes you really want that information. I recommend you turn it off (it's a one click in the toolbar) if you want to information or use the bookmarklet recommended here.
riskable 9y ago
Solution for the (much faster than Chrome now) Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-image-view-image-button/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-image-...

therealmarv 9y ago

Also worth mentioning as alternative: Use startpage.com image search or Duckduckgo image search. Startpage is superior... even proxies images often through their server. By the way: They filter less explicit content than Google does (Google is pro active making image search SFW and for me this is censoring).

tobyhinloopen 9y ago

Omg how do I get stock images & icons for my applications now?! /jk

Sylos 9y ago
Yeah, that's the biggest joke about this. Those who have an actual financial interest in not paying for stock images etc. are generally people who understand computers and basically will just have to do two clicks more than before, which is still absolutely worth doing compared to paying for the image. People trying to just grab whatever free image off the internet as well as cases of fair use are where this change is going to cause the most hindrance.

mrighele 9y ago

While I understand the reason Google did it (because of lawsuits), this is very annoying, and I mean in general: you don't know how or if you can use a resource you fetch from a website even if its robots.txt allows you to fetch it. This is in fact an even bigger deal for small companies than for Google, since the latter already reached a size where it can manage the issue somehow. It would be nice to have a version of robots.txt that states (in a predefined format) the license under which the resource is available. That way you could know right away what you can and you can not do with it.

littlestymaar 9y ago

Duckduckgo still has this feature ;). Yet another feature it has that Google doesn't.

egeozcan 9y ago

Image and html files are all documents on the web. Well at least they used to be. If you put an image on the web, you must expect people to be able to view it also without context.

bartread 9y ago
Actually hot-linking in that way is often considered bad form because it can incur bandwidth costs, sometimes significant, for the image host.
- egeozcan 9y ago
  You can decide to not serve them, looking at the referrer. Wanting your image to show up in image search results but not wanting it to be directly opened is trying to keep the cake and eat it at the same time.
- exodust 9y ago
  If the same amount of people visited the page containing that image, bandwidth would be a lot more with all the page content loading up. Is there good bandwidth and bad bandwidth? Image author can embed watermarks, credits, branding into images. Make use of the fact the image is out there.

bornonline1 9y ago

Next step - block on copying text

fishmeat 9y ago

SOO, Is there a browser add-on for me to fix this? I'm still using DuckDuckGo as main though.

underwater 9y ago

On the plus side the mobile version of Google Images no longer breaks horribly when I try to zoom into an image. That’s a big usability win.

testplzignore 9y ago

On Firefox Mobile, there's still a "Full-size image" button. Hopefully nobody at Google or Getty reads this comment :)

napa15 9y ago

The kinds of things that people get outraged over nowadays is amazing, holy cow. I always thought that it was very unfair for people to be able to see your images on google in full quality without even having to visit your website at all. But more than that.. it's a tiny extra step. 210 upvotes, 126 comments for this? I wouldnt even give this a thought if it wasnt for this weird interest here. I count this a step into the right direction, maybe they'll fix AMP too and make it into a checkmark that gets applied in the search results if your website fulfills certain speed requirements.

pluma 9y ago

If memory serves well, this wasn't ever possible on mobile devices in the first place. Countless times I've googled an image of something I want to show someone, found a result, clicked on it to zoom in (because the image search result page doesn't support zoom) and ended up on a page that doesn't even contain the image itself. I'm not sure what limitations were the rationale for not providing this option on mobile but selling this change as an improvement is ridiculous -- especially when it was made to avoid (more) legal issues.

swiley 9y ago
I'm pretty sure it was but the button to do it was some weird icon rather than text like on a desktop.

swiley 9y ago

Finding sheet music just got even harder. Thanks Google^H^H^H^H^H^H Getty.

icebreaker 9y ago

Google's "image search" has been completely destroyed by Pinterest anyway. In that vein, this doesn't make much of a difference.

tux1968 9y ago
I'm curious, in what way? I can not look at any Pinterest content because I don't have an account with them. Figured most people would relent and sign up -- but perhaps this is the problem you were talking about?
- whywhywhywhy 9y ago
  Pintrest spams Image Search results with bogus results and uses them as the top of their funnel. You click a Pintrest image unsuspectingly, Pintrest takes you to a vaguely relevant board the image is contained on, but you can't get to the image because a signup lightbox blocks the content. This has wider implications because using reverse image search wont point you to the original images either anymore it'll mostly point to Pintrest results and therefore Pintrests signup form.
  - bootlooped 9y ago
    Have you tried using search operators to exclude results from Pintrest?

Disruptive_Dave 9y ago

Wish they had kept this functionality when you choose to utilize the "Usage Rights -> Labeled for reuse" filter under Tools.

invalidusernam3 9y ago

This wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the existence of Pinterest.

Grue3 9y ago

IME very often the image in question is already unreachable from the page Google found it on (because of stuff like pagination). This button was a lifesaver.

krick 9y ago

So, how do I, as a user, get back at the Getty Images?

kislotnik 9y ago
If you're a photographer - upload your stuff to unsplash. Free high-quality content for casual use is something getty can't compete with, leaving them only with specialized markets (olympics photography etc)

ohiovr 9y ago

Not going to be a problem for me since I use Searx on my own domain.

anonytrary 9y ago

Google is reasserting their web-search monopoly and reaffirming their interest in gated communities. Are they trying to follow in the footsteps of Facebook? I mean, Google is an actual useful tool (e.g. maps, search, mail... unlike Facebook which is nothing short of a Ponzi scheme where you pay in secrets and mental health) so I can't really hate it, but this is just plain annoying. Will they store full-size copies on their servers, or do they reduce the dimensionality before storing in the cache?

anonytrary 9y ago

The fact that Getty images won the lawsuit is strange. If Google images is better and is more used than Getty, then Getty should have been killed by the free market long ago. It seems such a ruling is keeping them afloat for reasons beyond that of the efficacy of their service.

devunt 9y ago

I made a possible solution here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196 It adds back "View Image" button to Google Image Search results.

andrew_ 9y ago
well done!

Giorgi 9y ago

Well, that's why I clicked "Save" multiple times, till I realized what was going on. I guess "Open image in new tab" will get more work now. Google fucked up big time.

Renee-Helten 9y ago

The information is useful, Thanks for sharing

myf01d 9y ago

there goes my porn image search experience

everyone 9y ago

I finally completely switched over to duck duck go, only a few days ago. The google doodle with autoplaying audio is what drove me over the edge. (ddg is grand btw, ive barely noticed)

exodust 9y ago
I noticed the auto-playing audio too, and I think it may have caused lag in how quickly focus was given to the search field on page load. On typing my search query, the first two or so letters of what I was typing would not appear, and I think their google doodle was causing this bug. The problem went away when they changed the artwork.
jressey 9y ago
Yes, I had a love affair with DDG for years but switched for good about 6 months ago. The only thing I went to Google for was a better image search with non-specific search terms. This move will prevent me from doing that any longer.
y03a 9y ago
I really hope they don't follow suit on this.

z3t4 9y ago

The only problem is that 90% of the time the image is removed from the site ! The image is often still hosted, but has been removed from the page content. This is very annoying! So the next step for Google is to actually make sure the site still has the image before including it in the search results. btw Text search has the same problem, but is less annoying because we are so used to web sites not having the info and will just continue searching. It's extra annoying with images because we then actually knows it has the image we are looking for, but then it has not. It's like when the information I look for comes up in the site description, but when I visit the site it's not there. I guess this is a hard problem to solve, but would improve the search experience a lot. One idea is to have the browser fetch the site content and do a full text search on it before it's displayed in the search result. Could be done with a browser extension.

akerro 9y ago
>The image is often still hosted, but has been removed from the page content. The same applies to web searches, >So the next step for Google is to actually make sure the site still has the image before including it in the search results. And they should do the same for videos and DDoS the whole Internet just for 0.004% of chances making minor manual action a bit inconvenient.
- z3t4 9y ago
  You are arguing to save a minor amount of bandwidth VS saving thousands of man-hours.
  - akerro 9y ago
    >save a minor amount of bandwidth I dont think that's minor: https://www.cnet.com/news/google-goes-down-for-5-minutes-internet-traffic-drops-40/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-goes-down-for-5-minutes-int... now imagine google has to check if every link it will show still exists. That's like billions of trillions of request per hour world-wide. And another thing is a privacy issue, I know, google doesnt give a shit about it, but some people do. Think that you search for 'smelly poo' and 10 different servers get HEAD request to articles that are top ranked in this keyword, potentially 9 of the servers won't get a human-made visit, 9 sysadmins or developers will find a way to abuse that metadata in the future.

shmerl 9y ago

ashtube 9y ago

This feature was the main contributor to our 80% traffic loss when I was running a news aggregator, we had so much Image traffic. Now they remove it 5 years later. I welcome the change. Too late for me though.

EamonnMR 9y ago

Pinterest has already ruined my google image search experience. They "aggregate" content from other sites that I'd actually want to read, strip them of any context, and package them up with other images behind a login wall.

riskable 9y ago
No kidding! You used to be able to personalize your Google search results to blacklist pinterest.com but they removed that feature a while back. Now you have to type out -site:pinterest.com every single time you want to search for something or install an add-on like: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-blocklist/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-bloc... It's seriously annoying that they had a feature that solved the problem then they took it away. Just like removing the "View Image" button.
leggomylibro 9y ago
This is the worst for circuit diagrams. "Great, a couple of transistors and resistors, an 8-pin IC - that looks about right. Let's just see how it works, and...oh. Nope, it's just that image, with no part numbers. And nothing else." I can only guess that some people use it as a half-assed whiteboard to remember links and stuff, and Google picks up on that. The ironic problem for Google is, the 'pin' replaces the actual useful content which the Pinterest users were originally hoping to remember for later access!

btbuildem 9y ago

A browser plugin that brings this back is going to pop up in a day? Two?

sam0x17 9y ago

Google keeps giving us more and more reasons for us to replace it with something better that actually serves the needs of users. I should get coding ;)

jacquesm 9y ago

Click image, right click, choose menu option 'view image'.

volkk 9y ago
This is for Firefox. "Copy Image Address" for Chrome.

S_A_P 9y ago

The web is a lousy platform for keeping your images secure, I would like to know if the folks at Getty thought they were scoring a huge coup with this...

gapipro1 9y ago

Here is a Chrome Extension that adds back View Image button: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button-for-goo/jfjcobdgpgnlhbibdbobbplehgkmjdni https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button-...

SimeVidas 9y ago
Confirmed works in Firefox (Nightly) via the “Chrome Store Foxified” add-on (which lets you install Chrome extensions) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-...

kasperset 9y ago

At least on iPhone, one can view images using 3D touch. I guess long press should do the trick on other touch devices??

LoSboccacc 9y ago

The transition toward the Narrow Walled Web is almost complete, one lawsuit at a time. The last two decades were a blast, so long and thanks for all the fishes.

smpetrey 9y ago

Bookmark Applet: https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/ https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/

madisfun 9y ago

Search engines which still allow to open images directly: DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+ceo&t=hg&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+ceo&t=hg&iax=images&ia=imag... Bing: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Google+Ceo https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Google+Ceo Qwant: https://www.qwant.com/?q=google%20ceo&t=images https://www.qwant.com/?q=google%20ceo&t=images Yandex: https://yandex.com/images/search?text=google%20ceo https://yandex.com/images/search?text=google%20ceo

danjoc 9y ago

I would use DDG for image searches, but it doesn't want to work without javascript. In fact, images.duckduckgo.com seems to block duckduckgo.com in robots.txt. It's kinda a disaster, https://imgur.com/a/jkTvY https://imgur.com/a/jkTvY

LocalH 9y ago

Fuck Getty. They claim licensing rights over public domain images, and then tell the original copyright holder (who placed the image in the public domain) to fuck off. https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-lawsuit-ends-not-bang-whimper/ https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-laws...

bshacklett 9y ago
Unfortunately this seems like a good reason to never release something to the public domain, but only with something like a creative commons license. If she'd done that, she likely would have retained some control and possibly won that law suit. IP law in the US hasn't functioned as intended for a very long time now. People seem to be starting to pick up on that more. I can only hope that continues and we eventually see some real reform.
ahakki 9y ago
The work was in the public domain, which means anyone can do anything with it, including selling it. The original copyright holder has no more rights than anyone else once the work is in the public domain (thats kinda the point of it). This lawsuit was really rather pointless.

FussyZeus 9y ago

While we're at it can they add a feature where "-pinterest" is added to every image search by default, and then can be removed? Pinterest Image results are like barnacles, almost universally useless and they cover every search.

oldpond 9y ago

Just like TV. I can see the images, but I can't have them. Good thing they don't own the view button, and there are other search engines. Google is so evil now.

zeveb 9y ago

My knee-jerk reäction was to hate this, but then I realised that one can still view the image with Firefox's 'View Image' menu item. I think I'd rather use the browser's built-in UI to do it anyway, so no big deal.

rocky1138 9y ago

I noticed this yesterday. Totally ruins the product and makes it completely useless.

rocky1138 9y ago

Next step: disabling "view source" in Chrome.

jaysonelliot 9y ago

Image search is one place where Bing actually beats Google. Their results are nearly always better, I personally prefer their UI, and now they have the advantage of supporting this simple yet valuable feature. It will probably take me some time to lose my muscle memory that leads me to Google's image search and get used to going to Bing instead, but this was a great catalyst for me to start changing my habits.

nxc18 9y ago
It has been for a long time, too. Bing lead Google on image search features for a solid 5 years (at least) before google made an attempt to catch up. Now Google is losing features, although I wonder if Bing will need to do similar things for compliance? Either way, check out their video search as well, you won’t be disappointed.
jayd16 9y ago
So what's stopping Getty images or anyone else from going after Bing next?
Havoc 9y ago
>Image search is one place where Bing actually beats Google. Video search too in some sub-domains.

xylon 9y ago

Google search has always been successful because it was the best. Seems they don't want to be the best anymore.

rconti 9y ago

Google image search has been anti-user ever since they switched to their new UI 5 or so years ago. It's just utterly terrible in every way. Just another step in that direction.

ghrifter 9y ago

Prevents hotlinking, which I guess is nice and bad at the same time.

nchernykh 9y ago

I just made a quick chrome extension to bring it BACK. Vote up so more ppl can test it:) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button/cjdkhbdkblglaigekppkennaagbcbimb?authuser=1 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button/...

CivBase 9y ago

I get that Google made this change to settle with Getty Images - and I have some gripes about the PR-speak and implementation on Google's behalf - but I keep coming back to the same question. What grounds does Getty even have in a case like that? Getty offered the images up on the public domain. Why does Google have any obligation to direct them to a webpage instead of the image itself? Isn't that Getty's problem? The "view image" button sent users to Getty's own servers, so why should Google take any heat over a feature Getty supports? I think it's much shadier that Google is hosting copies of those copyrighted images for use in their own search tool, but this settlement does nothing to resolve that. That Verge article even posited a workaround which just uses the Goolge-hosted copy of the image! Isn't this the kind of stuff Google has invested millions of dollars into copyright-detection AI to avoid? And wouldn't images like that be covered by the DMCA anyways? I obviously don't have any legal experience and copyright law is a nightmare, but I don't understand why Google would have make any compromises here aside from complying with DMCA requests.

hokus 9y ago

make it harder to steal images? for what? do people put them on their website? Isn't that what google is doing?

ishjindal 9y ago

Bring back the view image button with this chrome extension - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bring-google-view-image-back https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bring-google-view-image-ba...