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Google Shopping: Upload Your Content Without Watermarks or Be Banned

77 points by johnnyg 13y ago

mschuster91 13y ago
Is this a message initiated by a human, or is it just some algorithm sending it? Is the reply-address one of those "smart" robots or can a real human be reached there?
- johnnyg 13y ago
  I'm a human and I'm really going to lose business over this policy.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    How so? If you make money through Google Shopping you should follow the rules. If you don't, well then no loss to you.
    - commentzorro 13y ago
      Like the OP said, because of the photos. In business a photo can often make the difference between a sale or no sale, or more important, which shop the sale goes to. Some businesses, like fashion, are almost entirely "photo" based. Others, like food, cars, etc. rely on it extensively. Here's an example in which, for arguments sake, we state that all non-photo factors are equal and the best they can be. Your business spends $100,000 a year to have top quality photos taken for the products you sell and you find the photos lead to a five to ten fold improvement in sales vs. stock or no photos. Now say all your competitors just steal your images and use them for their sites. Your sales drop back to where they were and your advantage is gone. And now you've got to make up the $100,000 to top it all off. Having a watermark won't stop lesser competitors from sealing your image, but other "on par" competitors will likely not due to potential litigation. If you don't have a watermark everyone steals it with the line, "I didn't know it was something I couldn't use ... my web guys just found it on the internet. I'll talk with them." (or whatever) So now you have to constantly police the internet for competitors using your images, deal with take-downs, and lawyers. Hope I've cleared things up a bit.
      - jonknee 13y ago
        ... Then don't use advertising services like Google Shopping. It's a pretty easy equation--do you make enough money through Google Shopping that it makes up for any potential losses from others stealing your image (which you can of course still go after legally)?
        scrollbar 13y ago
        Don't like one of your professors this semester? It's a pretty easy equation. Drop out of college. Not happy with NSA collecting dragnet surveillance on you? It's a pretty easy equation. Renounce your citizenship. Neighbor making too much noise at night? It's a pretty easy equation. Move out (or kill them?) Why can't someone that's party to a relationship make a complaint about an aspect of that relationship?
        commentzorro 13y ago
        I think you're missing the point, which is that not allowing watermarks _is_ the problem (and what the OP was trying to say through his frustration). There should be no need to do any sort of cost benefit analysis nor to police the internet. In other words, a cry for Google to change the policy to minimize the problem rather than just abandoning Google Shopping.
        samuellevy 13y ago
        I hate this attitude that 'If you're using it, you have no right to complain'. Sure, you can always vote with your feet, but there are often times when I really like a service, but a certain feature, or a certain decision really irks me. In this case, using google shopping increases OP's revenue, which is great, but the "don't watermark your images" rule means losing out on one part of their competitive advantage (i.e. having the best product pictures which show exactly what the customer wants/needs to see). The answer isn't to stop using Google Shopping, and the answer isn't to 'put up or shut up'. I would hope that someone at Google Shopping might be able to figure out a resolution with OP that is the best for everyone involved - i.e. doesn't break google's TOS, and doesn't leave OP paying to produce high-quality photos that his competition will steal.
  - timfrietas 13y ago
    Can you explain in more detail? I am actually curious, because as a customer I hate the watermarks. Do you think they help with brand awareness, or driving traffic to your own site?
    - johnnyg 13y ago
      Summary: If we publish our home brewed content without watermarks and it is lifted off google and used to compete against us, we have no effective recourse. Detail: In our company, one advancement track is from Customer Service to Products. It seems like a good and obvious thing to do, but typically photos and product materials in our space are produced by teams without direct experience helping customers make CPAP equipment work for them. We often find that the stock images and materials available to us are ineffective for internet customers, as they are often designed to target physicians and the owners of traditional brick and mortar CPAP retailers. We have spent a lot of time and effort to do better. I believe we have. Our product presentations are end CPAP user driven and focused. We view both the images produced and the knowledge that produced them as an earned competitive advantage. We've had instances where we woke up to find anothercpapco.com copying our product catalog verbatim. I think software patents slow innovation and that the DRM situation in the music industry is bad. Yet, I made the decision to water mark our images in order to prove them stolen.
      - drcube 13y ago
        > If we publish our home brewed content without watermarks and it is lifted off google and used to compete against us, we have no effective recourse. Sure you do. Compete back. Preferably on price and quality of your product rather than the prettiness of your pictures. Anyone can take a picture of a CPAP machine. Yours aren't special, and if that's what's harming your business, you're doing something wrong. Probably a lot of things.
        johnnyg 13y ago
        We do compete in those areas as well. Anyone can take a picture of a CPAP machine but not every can do so after 5 years experience serving customers using them. What angles do they want to see, what zoom shots make things most clear, how do those zooms relate to the specific features and usage of that machine/mask/product. CPAP is unfamiliar and visuals are the guide. It is important to do it right and hard to do it right. I think they are special as are the people who made them.
ivanca 13y ago
Link-bait; It should say "Google Adwords" not "Google".
- johnnyg 13y ago
  I've edited the title to specify Google Shopping.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
Include a flyer with a logo in the image and include the printed flyer in every delivery.
jonknee 13y ago
Google Shopping that is, not Google. Google Shopping is the paid eCommerce inclusion service. If you break the rules in AdWords you'll also be kicked out. This is a sensible rule too--if everyone had watermarks the pages would be hideous.
- maratd 13y ago
  > This is a sensible rule too--if everyone had watermarks the pages would be hideous. So as a merchant, I have to invest a ton of money into getting quality photography of my products ... only to have my competitors use those same images for free?
  - samworm 13y ago
    "I have to invest a ton of money" did you miss the bit where this is an optional service? A service which you (and your competitors) should only use if you consider the value offered to outweigh the cost?
    - nmcfarl 13y ago
      I think the parent is saying that without the ability to offer better service, via better photography than the competition, the benefits do not out way the cost for his use case.
  - awestroke 13y ago
    If your competitors wanted to use your images, they'd just remove the watermarks and use them anyway. Also, who cares if your competitors use them? Aim for better service.
    - hrktb 13y ago
      I am not sure to agree with the parent post, but I guess the point he/she tries to make is that the merchant will spend the time/money to have a product image, but this image will be reused for every other merchants selling the same product. It creates a situation where no merchant has an incentive to invest in having original or specific product images, as it won't make any difference relative to the competition, and if a product has a shitty image, tough luck. The basic stance would be "that's Google's policy, deal with it", and I undestand it. At the same time, there are so many product with really awful images (for a coat, there would be no view of the inner fabric for instance). If a merchant would take the time to take relevant pictures of the right functionnalities of a product, I'd also understand wanting clients to know they're the one who cared about it. With google shopping's system, the product maker has the burden of providing decent images of it's product, or no one will care to make something better.
lelf 13y ago
Did you accept their TOS?
adrow 13y ago
I think the reasoning would be that by putting your URL in the image, you are potentially encouraging people to enter it manually instead of clicking Google Shopping's link to the product.
- emilv 13y ago
  No, most people would not do that. They would click the links on the page.
  - adrow 13y ago
    It doesn't have to be most people, with the traffic levels that Google probably deal with, even a small percentage doing that could add up to a lot of 'lost' click revenue.
ig1 13y ago
Seems perfectly reasonable, if you want to supply an image for a product via a shop feed it should reflect the product and not be an advertisement for the shop. They don't seem to prohibit non-promotional (invisible) watermarks if the concern is image theft.
- annnnd 13y ago
  Why would invisible watermarks in any way deter the thieves? Granted, you can catch them if that is your intention, but it more effort for less gain. I don't understand the reason for this policy.
  - cma 13y ago
    Thieves can already scrub out visible watermarks with content-aware fill etc.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
chrisfarms 13y ago
Not sure why this gaining traction?. The rule seems fair, and someone broke the rule? Am I missing something.
- protomyth 13y ago
  Because it looks like Google is using one merchant's carefully photographed image of a product for all the merchants selling that product. This seems a bit unfair.
  - daemin 13y ago
    They should probably compensate the merchant who's photos they use with adwords or shopping credit for each photo that they use. Otherwise it seems too scummy.
jawns 13y ago
I was curious what size these images are being displayed within Google Shopping, so I checked it out. They're displayed at a standard thumbnail size during search and a larger size in the detail view. At thumbnail size, the watermark is barely noticeable. At the larger size, it's clearly there but isn't gaudy or anything. I understand the merchant's motivation for putting it there -- they don't want their images stolen and reused without attribution (although I wouldn't imagine there are a ton of people out there trying to steal images of CPAP masks). I don't really understand Google's motivation for banning such watermarks. So long as they're not the type of full-image watermarks that cover the entire product and make it difficult to tell what you're looking at, I don't think they significantly degrade the user experience. I guess what I'm saying is: Not all watermarks are created equal. The kind that make for a bad user experience should rightfully be banned ... but this is just a tiny credit line in the bottom right corner and isn't really covering up the image.
- philbarr 13y ago
  Probably it's easier to just ban all watermarks than police the use of watermarks.
  - GilbertErik 13y ago
    Exactly. What's the difference between the cpap.com watermark and this sort of watermarking which is designed to prevent reuse. https://cdn0.iconfinder.com/data/icons/ballicons/128/magnifier-128.png https://cdn0.iconfinder.com/data/icons/ballicons/128/magnifi...
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > I don't really understand Google's motivation for banning such watermarks. They want to use the images for other purposes. Shopping merchants are just there to create content for Google's various venues.
  - RexRollman 13y ago
    Winner.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
xiphias 13y ago
I was working on Google Shopping. Lots of images are checked by a combination of machine learning and humans (still, errors happen, as it's lots of data to deal with). The main problem with the watermarking is that the images can be shown in product listings where an image like this wouldn't look nice and also the image can be used for a product that is sold by multiple merchants.
- msy 13y ago
  So in short Google wants to use merchant's product images, which they've worked to produce or paid for as generic product images without compensation and if merchants don't like it their account is banned.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Google wants to use them according to the agreement that the merchant signed.
    - sentenza 13y ago
      And that's why I'll be cheering the EU regulators that will sue Google into the ground should their shoppy-thingy ever gain the marketshare of Amazon or Google search.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        They will sue them for preventing merchants from putting watermarks on their images? I find that hard to believe.
        sentenza 13y ago
        No. They would be sued for forcing merchants to let Google and others use their copyrighted material using the threat of banning them from the store. But that is only relevant if they are one of the dominant players. The reasoning is that they would then be using their market dominance to force merchants to forego their (IP) rights, which is in conflict with EU anti-trust regulations.
j2kun 13y ago
Why not Fourier watermarks?
- dudus 13y ago
  If you take a screenshot of an image with a Fourier Watermark does it retain the watermark? If it does it's a better solution than using a metadata watermark.
  - j2kun 13y ago
    That's an excellent question! Something I should explore on my blog... :)
gnu8 13y ago
The real reason may be that Google wants to use the images itself. It sure would make things easy if they could force their merchants to provide definitive and reusable images for all products ever, particularly to compete with Amazon.
raldi 13y ago
Could someone paste the image links below? Pastebin appears to be overriding my phone's ability to select and copy text.
- mbrutsch 13y ago
  http://www.cpap.com/productpage/disposable-white-filters-respironics-duet-lx-1-pack.html http://www.cpap.com/productpage/disposable-white-filters-res... http://www.cpap.com/productpage/probasics-zzz-mask-sg-full-face-mask-cushion.html http://www.cpap.com/productpage/probasics-zzz-mask-sg-full-f...
lnanek2 13y ago
I would prefer my images not have watermarks, but I'd also prefer the best images. This seems counter to that goal. I know some merchants like Newegg invest money into having their own photos done and it is very valuable for making it clear what connector components have and the like, but this makes it not quite so valuable to them since others could pretty easily reuse the images without being caught and without quality loss of watermark removal.
protomyth 13y ago
If I understand this correctly, I type something like "hard drive" and then see a box to the right with a "Shop for hard drive on Google". The box has pictures and prices. Clicking on that link brings up rows of products. Each row has a picture, product name, and text saying something like "$59.99 from 25+ stores". It looks to me like Google is going to use one of the merchants images of the products to summarize those 25+ stores in a row. If the image Google picks is watermarked then it is bad for Google. So, instead of Google getting an image of each product themselves, they get the merchant to provide them with a generic image to sell everyone's products. I guess if you use Google's service, you should provide them with the generic image they want and save the good image with measurements and such for your website. This seems to be another algorithmic solution for Google.
- judk 13y ago
  Sounds like Google rebuilding yet another pillar of their business on a foundation of copyright violation.
  - malandrew 13y ago
    Not really. You give them a license to use your image by using their service. That's not a violation if you voluntarily license the image to them per the terms of service. If you're not happy with this, go elsewhere with your images and your products.
    - protomyth 13y ago
      Given them a license is necessary so they can display the images, but Google using the license to help sell competitor's products because Google does not want the burden of procuring their own photographs is pretty scummy.
millzlane 13y ago
Let let me explain why one might watermark their photos. I sell aftermarket car parts for JDM vehicles. Most of these products don't have images from the manufacturer. Why? Well there lots of reasons but it boils down to different configurations. It would be too time consuming to take an image of every product in every configuration for every model they sell. So they may have a generic picture of an exhaust system, that may or may not be the product you're paying for. I know that consumers like to see what they buy. I want to have pictures of every image I sell. To do that, I need to order 1 of everything I plan to sell so I can take photos of each item. As you can see it gets pretty costly. I'm spending time, money and effort, to give the best possible shopping experience. All while letting the customer know I have a product in my hands that my competitors don't. My competitors on the other hand. They just signed up for a new drop shipping account with the same distributor but guess what? They have no images of the items they sell and have no capital to order the item in. So where do they get those images? You guessed it, from everyone else. When I first started I remember giving discounts to customers who would allow me to open their package and take showcase photos before sending them. I would be upset if someone used my photos without my permission. I don't have time or money to police the internet. So I protect my investment through the use of the water mark. If not, it'd be like Ebay where you see 40 different sellers using the same exact product image, atrocious.
- RokStdy 13y ago
  Thanks for the interesting perspective. This doesn't help you since you already have a catalog of photos, but I wonder if you might get around this rule if you took pictures of <part> on a backdrop with your logo repeated. That way, sure, I could try to crop it to get rid of your logo, but if it's an irregular shape I'd have to Photoshop your stuff out. Or maybe a sticker with your logo on an unimportant part of the product.
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    That does restrain them a bit though - with a watermark, they can batch-change the nature or obtrusiveness of the watermark, they can resell the unmarked images, they can update their logo freely. None of that can be done with the real-world-logo appearing on the product.
joshuaheard 13y ago
Photographs have a copyright automatically attached to them when created. You could use a copyright enforcement action against your competitors. Look at the DMCA.
velco 13y ago
Just create a practically invisible watermark of your photos by, for example, subtly altering only one of the RGB channels http://www.psdbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/4-blue-channel-outer-glow.jpg http://www.psdbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/4-blue-chan...
webdude 13y ago
We got hit with the same issue just a month ago, and were actually completely kicked out of the Shopping Feeds. We were finally able to talk to the right person at Google and get reactivated for a two week extension to give us a little more time to become compliant...at which point we then just removed all but the newly unwatermarked images from the feed and for the past 4 weeks have been doing nothing but recreating non-watermarked images for all of our products and slowly building up our feed again. I understand all the arguments...but when you're a company who IS trying to protect hard work in shooting great high def images in-house, it is very personal.
adamsrog 13y ago
Google Shopping: Obey the TOS You Accepted or Be Banned Seems reasonable.
GrowMap 13y ago
Everything Google does benefits big brands. This hurts small business and that has obviously been their goal since their CEO said the Internet is a "cesspool" and favoring big brands is how we're going to clean it up. Google has a virtual monopoly on paid and organic search. Nothing converts as well as search. They are severely damaging small businesses right and left. It takes dozens of other sources of customers to replace Google. Allowing Google to take over the Internet as we know it and turn it into their own personal business is dangerous and unethical. That is why since commerce began we have been warned about the dangers of monopolies. They became a monopoly through the media - both owned by the wealthy elite. The media chooses the winners from the products they built in the first place. If you use Google Shopping to display your products I encourage you to log out of Google and go see what they actually display. You are likely to find that your products never show up for the money keyword phrases even when you specify you only want to see the products in your store. But search on something general and you'll confirm all your products are in their feed. That is an even larger issue than watermarks. Both are symptoms of Google being far too powerful. I first wrote about that in http://growmap.com/farmer-update-google-competitors/ http://growmap.com/farmer-update-google-competitors/ Each major "Borg" site first hands small business a way to make money more easily and then starts taking it away. That is how AdWords worked, and now organic, Google Shopping, Facebook, etc. Expect it with Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat - any entity that is "Borg". Users handed Google all this power and they can take it away, but first businesses and bloggers must offer them alternatives and make it clear why we need to use something else. I know that sounds unlikely, but the tide does eventually turn. Wal-mart killed small towns across America - but they are making a comeback now that people realize what it cost them to be obsessed with cheap. We can do the same online, but it won't happen overnight.
- simoncion 13y ago
  > since their CEO said the Internet is a "cesspool" and favoring big brands is how we're going to clean it up. When did he say this? Can you provide a citation?
  - cypher543 13y ago
    http://www.wired.com/business/2008/10/google-ceo-call/ http://www.wired.com/business/2008/10/google-ceo-call/
timbro 13y ago
LOL. Fuck Google.
mark-r 13y ago
Would it be possible to have two images, a thumbnail submitted to Google and a full-size one with watermark to display on your web site?
- johnnyg 13y ago
  We looked at that, but the thumbnail would not be used as google displays both thumbnail and full sized (on mouse over) versions.

77 points by johnnyg 13y ago

Is this a message initiated by a human, or is it just some algorithm sending it? Is the reply-address one of those "smart" robots or can a real human be reached there?

johnnyg 13y ago
I'm a human and I'm really going to lose business over this policy.
- jonknee 13y ago
  How so? If you make money through Google Shopping you should follow the rules. If you don't, well then no loss to you.
  - commentzorro 13y ago
    Like the OP said, because of the photos. In business a photo can often make the difference between a sale or no sale, or more important, which shop the sale goes to. Some businesses, like fashion, are almost entirely "photo" based. Others, like food, cars, etc. rely on it extensively. Here's an example in which, for arguments sake, we state that all non-photo factors are equal and the best they can be. Your business spends $100,000 a year to have top quality photos taken for the products you sell and you find the photos lead to a five to ten fold improvement in sales vs. stock or no photos. Now say all your competitors just steal your images and use them for their sites. Your sales drop back to where they were and your advantage is gone. And now you've got to make up the $100,000 to top it all off. Having a watermark won't stop lesser competitors from sealing your image, but other "on par" competitors will likely not due to potential litigation. If you don't have a watermark everyone steals it with the line, "I didn't know it was something I couldn't use ... my web guys just found it on the internet. I'll talk with them." (or whatever) So now you have to constantly police the internet for competitors using your images, deal with take-downs, and lawyers. Hope I've cleared things up a bit.
    - jonknee 13y ago
      ... Then don't use advertising services like Google Shopping. It's a pretty easy equation--do you make enough money through Google Shopping that it makes up for any potential losses from others stealing your image (which you can of course still go after legally)?
      - scrollbar 13y ago
        Don't like one of your professors this semester? It's a pretty easy equation. Drop out of college. Not happy with NSA collecting dragnet surveillance on you? It's a pretty easy equation. Renounce your citizenship. Neighbor making too much noise at night? It's a pretty easy equation. Move out (or kill them?) Why can't someone that's party to a relationship make a complaint about an aspect of that relationship?
      - commentzorro 13y ago
        I think you're missing the point, which is that not allowing watermarks _is_ the problem (and what the OP was trying to say through his frustration). There should be no need to do any sort of cost benefit analysis nor to police the internet. In other words, a cry for Google to change the policy to minimize the problem rather than just abandoning Google Shopping.
      - samuellevy 13y ago
        I hate this attitude that 'If you're using it, you have no right to complain'. Sure, you can always vote with your feet, but there are often times when I really like a service, but a certain feature, or a certain decision really irks me. In this case, using google shopping increases OP's revenue, which is great, but the "don't watermark your images" rule means losing out on one part of their competitive advantage (i.e. having the best product pictures which show exactly what the customer wants/needs to see). The answer isn't to stop using Google Shopping, and the answer isn't to 'put up or shut up'. I would hope that someone at Google Shopping might be able to figure out a resolution with OP that is the best for everyone involved - i.e. doesn't break google's TOS, and doesn't leave OP paying to produce high-quality photos that his competition will steal.
- timfrietas 13y ago
  Can you explain in more detail? I am actually curious, because as a customer I hate the watermarks. Do you think they help with brand awareness, or driving traffic to your own site?
  - johnnyg 13y ago
    Summary: If we publish our home brewed content without watermarks and it is lifted off google and used to compete against us, we have no effective recourse. Detail: In our company, one advancement track is from Customer Service to Products. It seems like a good and obvious thing to do, but typically photos and product materials in our space are produced by teams without direct experience helping customers make CPAP equipment work for them. We often find that the stock images and materials available to us are ineffective for internet customers, as they are often designed to target physicians and the owners of traditional brick and mortar CPAP retailers. We have spent a lot of time and effort to do better. I believe we have. Our product presentations are end CPAP user driven and focused. We view both the images produced and the knowledge that produced them as an earned competitive advantage. We've had instances where we woke up to find anothercpapco.com copying our product catalog verbatim. I think software patents slow innovation and that the DRM situation in the music industry is bad. Yet, I made the decision to water mark our images in order to prove them stolen.
    - drcube 13y ago
      > If we publish our home brewed content without watermarks and it is lifted off google and used to compete against us, we have no effective recourse. Sure you do. Compete back. Preferably on price and quality of your product rather than the prettiness of your pictures. Anyone can take a picture of a CPAP machine. Yours aren't special, and if that's what's harming your business, you're doing something wrong. Probably a lot of things.
      - johnnyg 13y ago
        We do compete in those areas as well. Anyone can take a picture of a CPAP machine but not every can do so after 5 years experience serving customers using them. What angles do they want to see, what zoom shots make things most clear, how do those zooms relate to the specific features and usage of that machine/mask/product. CPAP is unfamiliar and visuals are the guide. It is important to do it right and hard to do it right. I think they are special as are the people who made them.

ivanca 13y ago

Link-bait; It should say "Google Adwords" not "Google".

johnnyg 13y ago
I've edited the title to specify Google Shopping.

moocowduckquack 13y ago

Include a flyer with a logo in the image and include the printed flyer in every delivery.

jonknee 13y ago

Google Shopping that is, not Google. Google Shopping is the paid eCommerce inclusion service. If you break the rules in AdWords you'll also be kicked out. This is a sensible rule too--if everyone had watermarks the pages would be hideous.

maratd 13y ago
> This is a sensible rule too--if everyone had watermarks the pages would be hideous. So as a merchant, I have to invest a ton of money into getting quality photography of my products ... only to have my competitors use those same images for free?
- samworm 13y ago
  "I have to invest a ton of money" did you miss the bit where this is an optional service? A service which you (and your competitors) should only use if you consider the value offered to outweigh the cost?
  - nmcfarl 13y ago
    I think the parent is saying that without the ability to offer better service, via better photography than the competition, the benefits do not out way the cost for his use case.
- awestroke 13y ago
  If your competitors wanted to use your images, they'd just remove the watermarks and use them anyway. Also, who cares if your competitors use them? Aim for better service.
  - hrktb 13y ago
    I am not sure to agree with the parent post, but I guess the point he/she tries to make is that the merchant will spend the time/money to have a product image, but this image will be reused for every other merchants selling the same product. It creates a situation where no merchant has an incentive to invest in having original or specific product images, as it won't make any difference relative to the competition, and if a product has a shitty image, tough luck. The basic stance would be "that's Google's policy, deal with it", and I undestand it. At the same time, there are so many product with really awful images (for a coat, there would be no view of the inner fabric for instance). If a merchant would take the time to take relevant pictures of the right functionnalities of a product, I'd also understand wanting clients to know they're the one who cared about it. With google shopping's system, the product maker has the burden of providing decent images of it's product, or no one will care to make something better.

lelf 13y ago

Did you accept their TOS?

adrow 13y ago

I think the reasoning would be that by putting your URL in the image, you are potentially encouraging people to enter it manually instead of clicking Google Shopping's link to the product.

emilv 13y ago
No, most people would not do that. They would click the links on the page.
- adrow 13y ago
  It doesn't have to be most people, with the traffic levels that Google probably deal with, even a small percentage doing that could add up to a lot of 'lost' click revenue.

ig1 13y ago

Seems perfectly reasonable, if you want to supply an image for a product via a shop feed it should reflect the product and not be an advertisement for the shop. They don't seem to prohibit non-promotional (invisible) watermarks if the concern is image theft.

annnnd 13y ago
Why would invisible watermarks in any way deter the thieves? Granted, you can catch them if that is your intention, but it more effort for less gain. I don't understand the reason for this policy.
- cma 13y ago
  Thieves can already scrub out visible watermarks with content-aware fill etc.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

chrisfarms 13y ago

Not sure why this gaining traction?. The rule seems fair, and someone broke the rule? Am I missing something.

protomyth 13y ago
Because it looks like Google is using one merchant's carefully photographed image of a product for all the merchants selling that product. This seems a bit unfair.
- daemin 13y ago
  They should probably compensate the merchant who's photos they use with adwords or shopping credit for each photo that they use. Otherwise it seems too scummy.

jawns 13y ago

I was curious what size these images are being displayed within Google Shopping, so I checked it out. They're displayed at a standard thumbnail size during search and a larger size in the detail view. At thumbnail size, the watermark is barely noticeable. At the larger size, it's clearly there but isn't gaudy or anything. I understand the merchant's motivation for putting it there -- they don't want their images stolen and reused without attribution (although I wouldn't imagine there are a ton of people out there trying to steal images of CPAP masks). I don't really understand Google's motivation for banning such watermarks. So long as they're not the type of full-image watermarks that cover the entire product and make it difficult to tell what you're looking at, I don't think they significantly degrade the user experience. I guess what I'm saying is: Not all watermarks are created equal. The kind that make for a bad user experience should rightfully be banned ... but this is just a tiny credit line in the bottom right corner and isn't really covering up the image.

philbarr 13y ago
Probably it's easier to just ban all watermarks than police the use of watermarks.
- GilbertErik 13y ago
  Exactly. What's the difference between the cpap.com watermark and this sort of watermarking which is designed to prevent reuse. https://cdn0.iconfinder.com/data/icons/ballicons/128/magnifier-128.png https://cdn0.iconfinder.com/data/icons/ballicons/128/magnifi...
lazyjones 13y ago
> I don't really understand Google's motivation for banning such watermarks. They want to use the images for other purposes. Shopping merchants are just there to create content for Google's various venues.
- RexRollman 13y ago
  Winner.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

xiphias 13y ago

I was working on Google Shopping. Lots of images are checked by a combination of machine learning and humans (still, errors happen, as it's lots of data to deal with). The main problem with the watermarking is that the images can be shown in product listings where an image like this wouldn't look nice and also the image can be used for a product that is sold by multiple merchants.

msy 13y ago
So in short Google wants to use merchant's product images, which they've worked to produce or paid for as generic product images without compensation and if merchants don't like it their account is banned.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Google wants to use them according to the agreement that the merchant signed.
  - sentenza 13y ago
    And that's why I'll be cheering the EU regulators that will sue Google into the ground should their shoppy-thingy ever gain the marketshare of Amazon or Google search.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      They will sue them for preventing merchants from putting watermarks on their images? I find that hard to believe.
      - sentenza 13y ago
        No. They would be sued for forcing merchants to let Google and others use their copyrighted material using the threat of banning them from the store. But that is only relevant if they are one of the dominant players. The reasoning is that they would then be using their market dominance to force merchants to forego their (IP) rights, which is in conflict with EU anti-trust regulations.

j2kun 13y ago

Why not Fourier watermarks?

dudus 13y ago
If you take a screenshot of an image with a Fourier Watermark does it retain the watermark? If it does it's a better solution than using a metadata watermark.
- j2kun 13y ago
  That's an excellent question! Something I should explore on my blog... :)

gnu8 13y ago

The real reason may be that Google wants to use the images itself. It sure would make things easy if they could force their merchants to provide definitive and reusable images for all products ever, particularly to compete with Amazon.

raldi 13y ago

Could someone paste the image links below? Pastebin appears to be overriding my phone's ability to select and copy text.

mbrutsch 13y ago
http://www.cpap.com/productpage/disposable-white-filters-respironics-duet-lx-1-pack.html http://www.cpap.com/productpage/disposable-white-filters-res... http://www.cpap.com/productpage/probasics-zzz-mask-sg-full-face-mask-cushion.html http://www.cpap.com/productpage/probasics-zzz-mask-sg-full-f...

lnanek2 13y ago

I would prefer my images not have watermarks, but I'd also prefer the best images. This seems counter to that goal. I know some merchants like Newegg invest money into having their own photos done and it is very valuable for making it clear what connector components have and the like, but this makes it not quite so valuable to them since others could pretty easily reuse the images without being caught and without quality loss of watermark removal.

protomyth 13y ago

If I understand this correctly, I type something like "hard drive" and then see a box to the right with a "Shop for hard drive on Google". The box has pictures and prices. Clicking on that link brings up rows of products. Each row has a picture, product name, and text saying something like "$59.99 from 25+ stores". It looks to me like Google is going to use one of the merchants images of the products to summarize those 25+ stores in a row. If the image Google picks is watermarked then it is bad for Google. So, instead of Google getting an image of each product themselves, they get the merchant to provide them with a generic image to sell everyone's products. I guess if you use Google's service, you should provide them with the generic image they want and save the good image with measurements and such for your website. This seems to be another algorithmic solution for Google.

judk 13y ago
Sounds like Google rebuilding yet another pillar of their business on a foundation of copyright violation.
- malandrew 13y ago
  Not really. You give them a license to use your image by using their service. That's not a violation if you voluntarily license the image to them per the terms of service. If you're not happy with this, go elsewhere with your images and your products.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    Given them a license is necessary so they can display the images, but Google using the license to help sell competitor's products because Google does not want the burden of procuring their own photographs is pretty scummy.

millzlane 13y ago

Let let me explain why one might watermark their photos. I sell aftermarket car parts for JDM vehicles. Most of these products don't have images from the manufacturer. Why? Well there lots of reasons but it boils down to different configurations. It would be too time consuming to take an image of every product in every configuration for every model they sell. So they may have a generic picture of an exhaust system, that may or may not be the product you're paying for. I know that consumers like to see what they buy. I want to have pictures of every image I sell. To do that, I need to order 1 of everything I plan to sell so I can take photos of each item. As you can see it gets pretty costly. I'm spending time, money and effort, to give the best possible shopping experience. All while letting the customer know I have a product in my hands that my competitors don't. My competitors on the other hand. They just signed up for a new drop shipping account with the same distributor but guess what? They have no images of the items they sell and have no capital to order the item in. So where do they get those images? You guessed it, from everyone else. When I first started I remember giving discounts to customers who would allow me to open their package and take showcase photos before sending them. I would be upset if someone used my photos without my permission. I don't have time or money to police the internet. So I protect my investment through the use of the water mark. If not, it'd be like Ebay where you see 40 different sellers using the same exact product image, atrocious.

RokStdy 13y ago
Thanks for the interesting perspective. This doesn't help you since you already have a catalog of photos, but I wonder if you might get around this rule if you took pictures of <part> on a backdrop with your logo repeated. That way, sure, I could try to crop it to get rid of your logo, but if it's an irregular shape I'd have to Photoshop your stuff out. Or maybe a sticker with your logo on an unimportant part of the product.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  That does restrain them a bit though - with a watermark, they can batch-change the nature or obtrusiveness of the watermark, they can resell the unmarked images, they can update their logo freely. None of that can be done with the real-world-logo appearing on the product.

joshuaheard 13y ago

Photographs have a copyright automatically attached to them when created. You could use a copyright enforcement action against your competitors. Look at the DMCA.

velco 13y ago

Just create a practically invisible watermark of your photos by, for example, subtly altering only one of the RGB channels http://www.psdbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/4-blue-channel-outer-glow.jpg http://www.psdbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/4-blue-chan...

webdude 13y ago

We got hit with the same issue just a month ago, and were actually completely kicked out of the Shopping Feeds. We were finally able to talk to the right person at Google and get reactivated for a two week extension to give us a little more time to become compliant...at which point we then just removed all but the newly unwatermarked images from the feed and for the past 4 weeks have been doing nothing but recreating non-watermarked images for all of our products and slowly building up our feed again. I understand all the arguments...but when you're a company who IS trying to protect hard work in shooting great high def images in-house, it is very personal.

adamsrog 13y ago

Google Shopping: Obey the TOS You Accepted or Be Banned Seems reasonable.

GrowMap 13y ago

Everything Google does benefits big brands. This hurts small business and that has obviously been their goal since their CEO said the Internet is a "cesspool" and favoring big brands is how we're going to clean it up. Google has a virtual monopoly on paid and organic search. Nothing converts as well as search. They are severely damaging small businesses right and left. It takes dozens of other sources of customers to replace Google. Allowing Google to take over the Internet as we know it and turn it into their own personal business is dangerous and unethical. That is why since commerce began we have been warned about the dangers of monopolies. They became a monopoly through the media - both owned by the wealthy elite. The media chooses the winners from the products they built in the first place. If you use Google Shopping to display your products I encourage you to log out of Google and go see what they actually display. You are likely to find that your products never show up for the money keyword phrases even when you specify you only want to see the products in your store. But search on something general and you'll confirm all your products are in their feed. That is an even larger issue than watermarks. Both are symptoms of Google being far too powerful. I first wrote about that in http://growmap.com/farmer-update-google-competitors/ http://growmap.com/farmer-update-google-competitors/ Each major "Borg" site first hands small business a way to make money more easily and then starts taking it away. That is how AdWords worked, and now organic, Google Shopping, Facebook, etc. Expect it with Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat - any entity that is "Borg". Users handed Google all this power and they can take it away, but first businesses and bloggers must offer them alternatives and make it clear why we need to use something else. I know that sounds unlikely, but the tide does eventually turn. Wal-mart killed small towns across America - but they are making a comeback now that people realize what it cost them to be obsessed with cheap. We can do the same online, but it won't happen overnight.

simoncion 13y ago
> since their CEO said the Internet is a "cesspool" and favoring big brands is how we're going to clean it up. When did he say this? Can you provide a citation?
- cypher543 13y ago
  http://www.wired.com/business/2008/10/google-ceo-call/ http://www.wired.com/business/2008/10/google-ceo-call/

timbro 13y ago

LOL. Fuck Google.

mark-r 13y ago

Would it be possible to have two images, a thumbnail submitted to Google and a full-size one with watermark to display on your web site?

johnnyg 13y ago
We looked at that, but the thumbnail would not be used as google displays both thumbnail and full sized (on mouse over) versions.