
Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results - quotemstr
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/15/17017864/google-removes-view-image-button-from-search-results
======
jakubp
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?

~~~
Buge
One of the follow up tweets is more honest:

>For those asking, yes, these changes came about in part due to our settlement
with Getty Images this week (see also
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/15/17017864/google-
removes-v...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/15/17017864/google-removes-view-
image-button-from-search-results) …). They are designed to strike a balance
between serving user needs and publisher concerns, both stakeholders we value.

[https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/964279749802512384](https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/964279749802512384)

~~~
amelius
Google, just give me the option to ignore Getty images altogether.

Why does Google always think they know what is best for me?

~~~
Slackwise
> Why does Google always think they know what is best for me?

This is the entire ethos of the "AI Revolution" in tech. The algorithm "knows
what is best for you". This will only get worse with more "AI" being applied
to more tech.

~~~
mygo
This is my gripe with Facebook and why I stopped using it. Biaaaaootch, I
added people to my friends list because I want to see their posts. Ditch the
dang algorithm and literally just show me everyone’s posts, in chronological
order. That’s all you literally have to do. Don’t worry about me getting
annoyed by spam, idiots who abuse their status updates will be blocked or
defriended by me and everyone else who isnt having it. It’s self-policing. My
discretion and the discretion of people on the platform is better than your
dumb algorithm. But now I don’t use your app at all, because you thought you
knew what’s best for me, and I kept missing out on people’s posts that I did
in fact want to see, and that pissed me off more than whatever you’re trying
to keep off of my newsfeed.

Your value proposition is having my entire social network on one feed. You’ve
done that. That’s all you have to do. Ditch the algorithm.

~~~
da_chicken
Yeah, the biggest problem with these types of algorithms is that they show
that the application developers don't trust the user to know what they want
and trust the user to fix their own problems.

It's one thing for an application to provide sensible defaults. It's another
thing entirely if it just second guesses the user.

~~~
mygo
The sad thing is the algorithm fixed zero problems for me. And it introduced
the problem of hiding things that I did in fact want to see.. for no good
reason other than apparently for their engineers to feel like they did
something. Because how can they justify their paychecks when the newsfeed
sorting order hasn’t changed since its prime of ~2009?

------
prepend
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.

~~~
kalleboo
> The more interesting question is why google is doing this.

They got sued.

 _" These changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images
this week."_

~~~
MikkoFinell
Why not just remove the feature for pictures from Getty then, or simply not
show their pictures at all? Surely that is within the technical capability of
Google.

~~~
joosters
Presumably because others could now sue Google for the same reasons, and they
would be even more likely to win given the Getty result.

~~~
dumbfounder
This. Otherwise known as "legal precedent".

~~~
rory096
Settlements don't establish precedent.

~~~
dumbfounder
Ah, good point, it was a settlement...

------
vortico
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.

~~~
psyc
Long ago, when I still thought of Google as a good company that made good
decisions for its users, I never had the impression that I'd done an
exhaustive web search until I searched on Google. Now, searching Google always
gives me the impression that I'm searching a heavily filtered, AI-curated
subset of the web. I switched to DDG recently, and so far the results give me
that impression that I'm searching 'the whole web' or something like it. I
suppose it's inevitable that Google was ruined by becoming so enormous, having
to be all things to everybody, especially its shareholders.

~~~
nicolas_t
I love DDG but the problem is that google is still the best whenever I want to
search something that's not in English or that's localized. So I still use
google for that.

~~~
lostmsu
Try Yandex if it is available in your language.

~~~
OldArrow
How is Yandex any better then Google?

------
EamonnMR
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
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-
bloc...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/personal-blocklist/)

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.

------
Zak
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
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
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.

------
LocalH
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-
laws...](https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-lawsuit-ends-
not-bang-whimper/)

~~~
bshacklett
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.

------
pedalpete
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?

~~~
lambda
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.kee...](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)

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.

~~~
NamTaf
Your edit picked up on exactly what I was going to reply with letting you know
until I saw you already got there. Expanding on it, you can 'copy image
location' (at least in FF) to get the original image URL, and you can also
middle-click 'view image' to open the image itself in a new tab. Both are
useful tricks when rifling through images.

------
ax0ar
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
I don't think Google likes it either. "These changes came about in part due to
our settlement with Getty Images this week."

~~~
ax0ar
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.

~~~
lambda
No, because Getty is in the business of licensing their images to other sites.
If an image appears on a news article, it could be from Getty. If it's on a
blog post, it could be from Getty.

You could have some protocol by which sites indicated that it can't be linked;
but then everyone who embeds a Getty image would have to change their site to
adopt that, and that would probably involve Getty having to change their
licensing terms to require that, which would be a huge hassle for their
customers who probably wouldn't bother doing it because it's difficult and
doesn't help them out at all.

Or you'd have to do some kind of watermark embedding.

Anyhow, while it would be technically possible to do one of these things, I
suspect that legally it was just a lot simpler to get Google to remove the
feature.

~~~
ericd
That all sounds like a Getty problem.

~~~
nkristoffersen
Which is why they sued. To solve that problem.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Which is why they sued. To solve that problem.

Except that they didn't _solve_ the problem at all, they only foisted it onto
everyone else, who now have to deal with an inferior interface even when they
aren't dealing with Getty images.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
But that is NOT a Getty problem. Getty's iStockPhoto has its own image search,
which is under its control and contains only its own images that are for sale.
Crippling other image search products is good for Getty.

------
madisfun
Search engines which still allow to open images directly:

DuckDuckGo:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+ceo&t=hg&iax=images&ia=imag...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+ceo&t=hg&iax=images&ia=images)

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)

------
therealmarv
Solution for Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/straight-to-
full-s...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/straight-to-full-size-
for/ghhmhdkbiodiengmhbbpjkcjodingned)

Chrome Extension "Straight to Full-Size for Google Images"

~~~
andrew_
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
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.

------
PinkMilkshake
Browser extension that restores functionality by end of the week?

(At least Bing has really good image search.)

~~~
dmoy
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
im bullish on blockchain tech around solving this issue. No single point to
sue & bully.

~~~
ISL
Just a public ledger to show exactly whom is responsible.

~~~
Zak
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
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?

------
malwrar
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
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
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.

------
OscarCunningham
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
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...

------
jaysonelliot
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
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.

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

~~~
tux1968
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
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
Have you tried using search operators to exclude results from Pintrest?

------
z3t4
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
>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
You are arguing to save a minor amount of bandwidth VS saving thousands of
man-hours.

~~~
akerro
>save a minor amount of bandwidth

I dont think that's minor:

[https://www.cnet.com/news/google-goes-down-for-5-minutes-
int...](https://www.cnet.com/news/google-goes-down-for-5-minutes-internet-
traffic-drops-40/)

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.

~~~
z3t4
I doubt Google account for 40% of Internet traffic. How would you even measure
that !? What most likely happened was they saw a 40% drop in traffic _on their
servers_ while Google was down.

~~~
akerro
Eh...
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/17/google_outage/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/17/google_outage/)

~~~
z3t4
Same source. Basically the same article too. Probably a marketing piece by
GoSquared.

------
TOLATS
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.

------
devunt
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_
well done!

------
chrisper
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...

------
egeozcan
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
Actually hot-linking in that way is often considered bad form because it can
incur bandwidth costs, sometimes significant, for the image host.

~~~
egeozcan
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.

------
TheLilHipster
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
Richer click and copy url doesn’t even work on google search results anymore.
You just get the google analytics redirection crap. Bleargh.

~~~
rasz
find and install Google Tracking-B-Gone, it strips all that garbage

~~~
acranox
Neat! I wish I didn’t need browser addons for this, but maybe it’s worth
checking out.

------
everyone
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
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.

------
S_A_P
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...

------
mrighele
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.

------
pluma
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
I'm pretty sure it was but the button to do it was some weird icon rather than
text like on a desktop.

------
CivBase
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.

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

------
invalidusernam3
This wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the existence of Pinterest.

------
nchernykh
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/...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-
button/cjdkhbdkblglaigekppkennaagbcbimb?authuser=1)

------
ashtube
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.

------
anonytrary
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?

------
sid-kap
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.

~~~
lobster_johnson
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.

------
smpetrey
Bookmark Applet:

[https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/](https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/)

------
gapipro1
Here is a Chrome Extension that adds back View Image button:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-
button-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image-button-for-
goo/jfjcobdgpgnlhbibdbobbplehgkmjdni)

~~~
SimeVidas
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-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/)

------
therealmarv
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).

------
nixpulvis
That fucking button never worked anyway...

------
stonewhite
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.

------
anonytrary
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.

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throwaway2483
This is unfortunate. Now I’ll have to right + “Open original image in new tab”
in order to infringe

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ChuckMcM
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.

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

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FussyZeus
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.

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zeveb
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.

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

~~~
shatu29
You're in luck.
[https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/](https://d3vr.github.io/viewimage/)

~~~
gsich
How is this faster then "rightclick copy-address"?

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bornonline1
Next step - block on copying text

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

~~~
Sylos
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.

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

~~~
volkk
This is for Firefox. "Copy Image Address" for Chrome.

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rconti
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.

------
Giorgi
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.

------
nour_m
F12 => Copy image src

------
oldpond
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.

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Grue3
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.

------
sam0x17
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
;)

------
swiley
Finding sheet music just got even harder.

Thanks Google^H^H^H^H^H^H Getty.

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

~~~
kislotnik
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)

------
underwater
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.

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

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

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

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

------
rocky1138
I noticed this yesterday. Totally ruins the product and makes it completely
useless.

------
tyfon
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.

------
fishmeat
SOO, Is there a browser add-on for me to fix this?

I'm still using DuckDuckGo as main though.

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

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

------
cpncrunch
Search by image is still there, in latest chrome.

------
shmerl
Copyright stupidity trumps usability, as usual.

------
LoSboccacc
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.

------
rocky1138
Next step: disabling "view source" in Chrome.

------
hokus
make it harder to steal images?

for what? do people put them on their website?

Isn't that what google is doing?

------
danjoc
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)

------
myf01d
there goes my porn image search experience

------
Renee-Helten
The information is useful, Thanks for sharing

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

~~~
Method-X
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.

~~~
EamonnMR
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.

------
tritium
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
It's... not because they want to. Getty sued them; it's a change they're
begrudgingly making.

~~~
tritium
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)

~~~
LocalH
Here's another reason.

[https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-
laws...](https://petapixel.com/2016/11/22/1-billion-getty-images-lawsuit-ends-
not-bang-whimper/)

