The search-engine giant Google takes a step to curb the lifting of copyrighted images from its platform. It has now removed the “view image” button from its image search results.
“Today we’re launching some changes on Google Images to help connect users and useful websites. This will include removing the View Image button. The Visit button remains, so users can see images in the context of the web pages they’re on,” Google SearchLiaison tweeted on Friday.
Google SearchLiasion in another tweet said, “For those asking, yes, these changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images this week [..]. They are designed to strike a balance between serving user needs and publisher concerns, both stakeholders we value.”
Last week, Google signed a multi-year global licensing deal with Getty Images, which would enable it to use Getty’s content within its various products and services.
Google will now make copyright attribution and disclaimers more prominent in image search results. Now, users will have to wait for a website to load and then scroll through it to find the image.
Sometimes websites disable the ability to right-click as well thus making it even harder for someone to grab a photo they are looking for.
Furthermore, Google also removes the ‘search by image’ button that came up when people opened up an image. “Reverse image search *still works* through the way most people use it, from the search bar of Google Images,” Google SearchLiason pointed out.
Explaining the motive behind the move, the Google SearchLiason account said that “Ultimately, Google Images is a way for people to discover information in cases where browsing images is a better experience than text. Having a single button that takes people to actionable information about the image is good for users, Web publishers and copyright holders.”