Google Removes Ability To View Images, Now Requires You To Save Them To Your Account.

[wyattzx]

 

Edit 2: It looks like this has been confirmed, if PetaPixel is to be trusted. It appears to be in conjunction with a partnership between Google and Getty Images.

Quote

Google Images is an epicenter of copyright infringements across the Web, as people, either knowingly or unwittingly, search for, download, and misuse copyrighted photos without permission. But for photographers, there’s some good news: Google is going to roll out changes to the image search engine that are designed to help protect your copyright.

The changes were reportedly decided on through a partnership between Google and the stock photo agency Getty Images, which has been lodging “anti-competitive” complaints against Google in the US and EU for making high-resolution stock photos easily downloadable through Google Images.

Credits to @VegetableStu for the link.

 

Original Post:

 

I wanted to post this in Tech News, but as of now I cannot find any online source.

 

As of today, you can no longer view image sources through Google Images. Before, when viewing an image, you could click "View Image" and be taken to the page where the image is, typically resulting in a URL ending in a .jpg or .png file extension. This is no longer possible, as the only options are now to visit the website hosting the image, or to save it directly to your Google Account, which has proven difficult for copyrighted material.

Additionally, right-clicking and opening the image in a new tab will ONLY open the thumbnail; you can no longer open HD images through Google directly. You are required to go to the page host.

All images also now have a "Image may contain copyright" tag underneath them, next to where image resolution is now displayed. This appears on all content.

 

This appears to be true on multiple browsers, both with and without Google accounts logged in.

 

Edit: Upon further investigation, this does not seem to affect everybody. I've been receiving conflicting reports, where some users are missing the option, and others have it just fine. This has held true across both Chrome and Firefox Quantum. It appears this has to do with Google's Save feature.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Pro tip: you can right click on the image and click "view image" in the dropdown menu to view it normally.

 

A lot more hassle, but it does work. I just now googled "dogs", picked a random image, did that, and got this as a result: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SfLV8hD7zX4/maxresdefault.jpg

[Spaceman3600]

i didn't have the same issue

[wyattzx]

Just now, Spaceman3600 said:

i didn't have the same issue

Upon asking around, I'm getting conflicting results. Some users are reporting the button is fine, others are reporting it's missing. All of my personal testing has shown it to be the latter. I wonder if it's only slowly being rolled out?

[Guest]

Do you mean this option was removed?

Spoiler

Spoiler

Edit: I thought that the cursor would show up, what I was hovering over was the "View Image" button

Edited February 14, 2018 by Guest

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

15 minutes ago, NonaHexa said:

I wanted to post this in Tech News, but as of now I cannot find any online source.

 

As of today, you can no longer view image sources through Google Images. Before, when viewing an image, you could click "View Image" and be taken to the page where the image is, typically resulting in a URL ending in a .jpg or .png file extension. This is no longer possible, as the only options are now to visit the website hosting the image, or to save it directly to your Google Account, which has proven difficult for copyrighted material.

Additionally, right-clicking and opening the image in a new tab will ONLY open the thumbnail; you can no longer open HD images through Google directly. You are required to go to the page host.

All images also now have a "Image may contain copyright" tag underneath them, next to where image resolution is now displayed. This appears on all content.

 

This appears to be true on multiple browsers, both with and without Google accounts logged in.

 

Edit: Upon further investigation, this does not seem to affect everybody. I've been receiving conflicting reports, where some users are missing the option, and others have it just fine. This has held true across both Chrome and Firefox Quantum. It appears this has to do with Google's Saves feature.

Like many features, it's probably going to be slowly rolled out to every one. I for one has already seen this change and have found it quite annoying. Not exactly sure of the rational behind this move other than to d**k us around. 

[NoRomanBatmansAllowed]

Maybe it's a location thing?

 

I'm in Canada, and it still works like it used to.

Spoiler

 

 

[GoodBytes]

Yup I noticed... I also noticed that Google remove search results it doesn't like.

Bing is getting more and more interesting.

[Clanscorpia]

I can still view HD images in other tabs so I havent got it yet, but that might be because Im in Ontario.

[tsk]

35 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Bing is getting more and more interesting.

Two years ago no one would have taken that statement seriously, yet here we are.

[Bananasplit_00]

seems i here in Sweden can still do it

[porina]

A quick check on google.nl shows it working normally. I'm in the UK but geolocation is intentionally broken on the connection I'm currently using.

 

I'd speculate it may be limited to certain image sources, such as Getty Images, or there is a regional aspect.

[goodtofufriday]

50 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Yup I noticed... I also noticed that Google remove search results it doesn't like.

Bing is getting more and more interesting.

I might finally check out this duck duck go...

Even Google search has been frustrating lately giving me results that have nothing to do with what I want and completely removing relevant words. 

 

Sure advance search is there but that's inconvenient when I need to do it for every search. 

[yolosnail]

56 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Yup I noticed... I also noticed that Google remove search results it doesn't like.

Bing is getting more and more interesting.

I personally think Bing images is a lot more useful than Google Images. Whereas Google finds billions of images per search, 99.9% if them are irrelevant, but Bing finds less but more relevant images. And I also find the UI easier

[Bcat00]

Lol this is hilarious. I still remember one of these photo bank companies filed a takedown claim against the true owner of one of their photos and got countersued for 1 million.

 

This is a total farce in and out

[WhatTheHell]

Strange I literally dealt with this ten minutes ago and now I can 'view image' again as before.

[Guest]

52 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Bing is getting more and more interesting.

I use both regularly together and it isn't like its terrible or anything of the sort. While Google may have better suggestions for general stuff, I've found Bing does a far better job of finding specific/niche results than Google does (Considering it drops search terms to find "relevant" results, even if it means ignoring a whole error code)

25 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

I personally think Bing images is a lot more useful than Google Images. Whereas Google finds billions of images per search, 99.9% of them are irrelevant, but Bing finds less but more relevant images. And I also find the UI easier

This ^

[Jito463]

34 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

I might finally check out this duck duck go...

I switched Opera to using DDG by default a while back.  Occasionally I need to use Google still, but it works fine for the most part.

[TVwazhere]

I just noticed I cant do that either

 

But to me it doesn't matter. All I use it for is to right click and copy image. That always copies the native resolution anyways, so thats all I care about

Spoiler

 

[TVwazhere]

5 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

is it from the result image now? like if you right click the "preview" box on the left half

Yes I right click the preview window and hit "copy image". The image copied is at the resolution listed under it even if the resolution shown is smaller, in this case, 1411 x 1800. It even retains PNG transparency, as shown in my previous spoiler (tall image, didnt want to take up page real estate)

[CTR640]

"to help protek imagz copyfailright"....?

Euhm, if there is a pic I cannot save, printscreen it is. They are like those movieindustries to stop illegal downloading at any cost, even it means to take lifeforms.

[Misanthrope]

Sorry but to missappropiate a copyrighted picture requires more than a Google image search: anybody that's building a professional website, doing video production, game production, etc. That intends to profit from those endeavors knows full well that they need to know where the images come from.

 

And anybody who doesn't really profits from the used images should be covered under fair use.

 

So who is Google punishing here? I'm willing to bet 99.99% of people using google image just grab something for personal, fair-use-covered use. It seems like a pedantic way of just forcing you to use the snap tool or other types of screen grabs and negate the high resolution versions to you.

 

Seems like a colossal waste of fucking time to me that as it's almost always the case with DRM, will do nothing to stop infractions and it's just there to negate fair use and mostly harmless kids trying to do bad memes.

[GilmourD]

I just viewed this image just fine via Google Images.

 

[GilmourD]

2 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

have you guys tried a stock image result? o_o

[DrMacintosh]

Well I use bing which is the better image search engine anyway so......