from the waiting-for-an-addon-in-1..2..3.. dept.
Google settled a lawsuit with Getty Images and announced a multiyear global licensing deal with the company. One part of the settlement is the removal of the "View Image" buttons in Google Images searches. This is not entirely crippling, as you can still usually open the largest version of the image using your web browser's context menu:
Google is making a change to image search today that sounds small but will have a big impact: it's removing the "view image" button that appeared when you clicked on a picture, which allowed you to open the image alone. The button was extremely useful for users, since when you're searching for a picture, there's a very good chance that you want to take it and use it for something. Now, you'll have to take additional steps to save an image.
The change is essentially meant to frustrate users. Google has long been under fire from photographers and publishers who felt that image search allowed people to steal their pictures, and the removal of the view image button is one of many changes being made in response. A deal to show copyright information and improve attribution of Getty photos was announced last week and included these changes.
Google is also removing "Search by Image" buttons, requiring users to drag an image into the search bar instead.
Also at Search Engine Land and 9to5Google.
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A few months ago, back in August, the Web passed a milestone in that less than half of Google searches result in even a single click onwards. In other words, the majority of searchers never left Google after seeing the results. That could be a warning that Google is transitioning from a search engine to more of a walled-garden. Or it could mean that the results aren't good any more and people move on to other engines after only a quick glance. If the former, where searches are no longer resulting in click through, then what should be the proper response from the Web at large?
From: Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click:
On desktop, things haven’t changed all that much in the last three years. Organic is down a few percent, paid and zero-click are up a bit, but June of 2019 isn’t far off January of 2016.
On mobile, where more than half of all searches take place, it’s a different story. Organic has fallen by almost 20%, while paid has nearly tripled and zero-click searches are up significantly. Even way back in January 2016, more than half of mobile searches ended without a click. Today’s, it’s almost 2/3rds.
Three trends are made clear by these numbers:
- The percent of searches available as organic traffic from Google is steadily declining, especially on mobile.
- Paid clicks tend to increase whenever Google makes changes to how those results are displayed, then slowly decline as searchers get more familiar with spotting and avoiding them.
- Google’s ongoing attempts to answer more searches without a click to any results OR a click to Google’s own properties are both proving successful. As a result, zero-click searches, and clicks that bring searchers to a Google-owned site keep rising.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:28AM (6 children)
Are why we cant have nice things in this world.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:32AM (4 children)
We still have Bing. [bing.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:49AM
It was chewing bubble gum inside your rectum. Even though you asked "Why?", it never answered. It never answered. It never answered. It never answered. The nightmare has only just begun...
(Score: 5, Touché) by BK on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:58AM
He did say NICE things...
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 17 2018, @02:23AM (1 child)
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday February 17 2018, @03:16AM
Mark Getty, very smart and hard working guy, great businessman. Believe me, he earned his place on the Rich List. He started with a small inheritance. He bought Getty Images for a few million. Built it up TREMENDOUSLY. And sold it to Carlyle for a few billion. Great job!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by toddestan on Saturday February 17 2018, @05:14PM
Especially since Getty Images themselves are well known for stealing others' copyrighted works, and even having the gall to send threatening letters to the people who they've stolen from demanding payment for the use of their own images.
https://petapixel.com/2016/07/27/photographer-suing-getty-images-1-billion/ [petapixel.com]
If I was Google I would have told Getty to go pound sand.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by darkfeline on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:57AM (9 children)
Yes, the additional step of right clicking and clicking "Save image" or "Open image in new tab".
Good golly, there are so many more valuable things to complain about, this is not one of them.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Informative) by ataradov on Saturday February 17 2018, @02:02AM (5 children)
"View image" led to a full image, not the preview. Now you actually have to visit the site to get the full image. Possibly getting some bitcoin mining malware on the way.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:53PM (1 child)
Actually it does lead to the full image. Always has. The only exception is images that are too large for goigle to proxy, which will retain a thumbnail on their server (you also get that thumbnail if you right click the image before it finishes loading from the source page fully and/or the source page is offline).
(Score: 1) by ataradov on Sunday February 18 2018, @06:45AM
Presumably getty cares about those full res pictures, not some random small stuff. I assume small versions will remain as is.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday February 18 2018, @03:58AM (2 children)
Would you care to provide an example? I tried five images searching for cake, and every single one opened the original image as hosted on the source website/domain.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by ataradov on Sunday February 18 2018, @06:42AM
Yes, and this is not going to be the case anymore after the change takes effect.
(Score: 1) by ataradov on Sunday February 18 2018, @06:53AM
Well, the button has disappeared. Use tools to select only large pictures. Now you see small preview only. And a few sites I tried, did not go to the actual page with a picture, but to some random dynamically generated page.
It looks like it is time to investigate the GreaseMonkey script.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Saturday February 17 2018, @02:04AM (1 child)
On some sites, they use Javascript specifically to block you from right-clicking and saving the image. Disabling Javascript doesn't help because the site is dependent on it so you won't see the image at all without it. Luckily, there's extensions to get around this, like "Image Picka", but is extra hassle and most people don't know how to do this, or just give up.
(Score: 1) by DarkMorph on Sunday February 18 2018, @07:10PM
A few weeks ago someone asked me about pulling fonts from any website. Oddly the media list in Firefox doesn't enumerate font payloads, but that doesn't stop the user from perusing through the CSS and snagging the binary assets nonetheless. And the hilarious part of this? The inquiring person was taking a font from a site trying to sell the fonts they've injected in full into your browser for viewing. If you don't want someone to have content from your site then don't send it to the fucking browser in the first place!!
Tip for those trying to sell fonts they invent: try just posting images of what the text looks like rendered without actually using the font in the client visiting your page.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday February 18 2018, @02:53AM
Not a reliable alternative. I've noticed since the change that doing so with GIS is a craphsoot: sometimes you get the full-size image from the site, other times you get a tiny thumbnail that, presumably, they're serving specifically to Google to screw over people trying exactly that. The now-removed button was a lot more useful.
I mostly use DDG for everything else already, but I still hung on to GIS because it did a good job most of the time. Now, though, it's annoying me enough that I'll probably quit using it, except as a fallback when (if) other engines fail to find what I'm looking for.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @02:23AM (5 children)
And no much after, the community based solutions appeared to revert this UI regression (that seems to be how UIs evolve in the XXI century):
https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/ [github.io] bookmarklet (bookmark that is a JS big line and does something), I find this a bit slow, having to move the pointer from page zone to bar or menu (or press some keys to navigate the menu). The instructions page leads us to other solutions:
https://github.com/devunt/make-gis-great-again [github.com] extensions for FF and Chrome (not tested because see next)
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devunt/make-gis-great-again/master/gis-vib.user.js [githubusercontent.com] GreaseMonkey script that just adds the button back (prefered for me, as I have GM already installed and it just makes things as before)
The real solution Google should have taken: don't index Getty images. But corporations gonna corporate.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday February 17 2018, @03:20AM
That middle cyber looks a little funny -- like Arik's tweets -- but I love the name!!!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Saturday February 17 2018, @03:41AM (3 children)
How would Google have known whether a particular image on some other website was the property of Getty?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday February 17 2018, @05:42AM (1 child)
I see where this is going.... I just got through trying to see some applications of Linear Technologies' LTC1167 RMS to DC converter measurement chip.
I did not get much done today. I thought maybe I had some virus or something. It wasn't till I came here and saw this story that it all made sense as to where my problems had originated from. It was NOT my machine. It was the Congress of the USA. Thanks, guys, you really Fought for Me, just like you said you would, through the microphone, before election day.
Before, I could see enough to see if the circuit was anything close to what I was looking for, and give me a heads-up on who else was messing with this design and what their results of that topology was. You know, you could call it copyright violation, you could call it sharing, you could even call it teamwork.
To see what I was seeing, google "LTC1167" and click on the "Images" tab. Google gave me scores of thumbnails of what others have come up with. I would click on an interesting one for more detail... just got the same thumbnail all by itself. Hardly useful.
Today's work was not very fruitful. I spent a helluva lot of time trying to go through loopholes of dead ends, javascript problems, and I felt I was like a John in a House of Ill Repute having to drop malware prevention shields in order to look at a schematic.
You don't know just how bad I want to send my government my tax return, shrunk to a thumbnail, then force THEM to click on links, laced with JavaScript of unknown intent to get to the CopyRighted version, leaving them no recourse.
But let me tell you - they may be able to dish this kind of crap out, but they flat won't take it themselves.
Make America Great Again.... Throw Stumbling Blocks in the path of those trying to get something done, then charge to remove the stumbling block. The American Way. Or, lets just buy up everything, rent seek, and have the Chinese build our stuff. God knows we don't want to build it here. Or at least Congress does. Just send out for it. Offer dollars. They will deliver.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @07:59AM
Americans [ssl-images-amazon.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @05:59AM
Getty complains and fills one of those DMCA forms, or whatever Google has to drop "pirate" links.
Google could even use the image search system to find clones. But seeing how Getty takes over public domain, then says it's theirs and only theirs... just blackhole Getty site.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @08:43AM (2 children)
Maybe don't put it on the internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @10:43AM
Yeh, I found a picture of ME. Naked. On the internet.
I have some lady to thank for that. Thank goodness the link did not have any identifying info... so its just another nekkid guy.
Oh well, maybe someone get their jollies off on it. I can tell you there are a lot more attractive specimens out there, though. I am quite on the scrawny side.
(Score: 2) by dw861 on Monday February 19 2018, @12:25AM
Not a practical suggestion if you are in the business of selling digital images on the internet. If there were a way around this it would already be in effect.
As you probably know, such sites post lower resolution images, or images with watermarks, as an invitation to purchase rights to use a high resolution image with no watermark.
I find that many young students give class presentations using slides that contain watermarked images. I always take the opportunity to point out that this means they have infringed somebody's copyright. Whether you think that is ok or not is irrelevant. The dept for which I worked some years back was successfully sued by a photographer when a faculty member used an unattributed, unlicensed photo on a webpage. It was expensive to resolve.
Do whatever you want in your private life, if one can only harm themself. At work, it is a good idea to obey the law. Unless you've got something else going in your favour, your career will advance faster.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @09:19AM (1 child)
Just saying...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @06:27PM
... and other stock agencies?
That would be a good solution. Yesterday I searched for images of catkins of a particular species, and got bombarded with thumbnails to Alamy. Screw that. I am looking for a scientific topic, not for pretty pictures to buy.