“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 webpages they’re on,” Google SearchLiaison tweeted on Thursday. Basically, the change done by the search giant is to “help connect users and useful websites,” according to a series of tweets by Google’s Search Liaison. The View Image feature allowed the users to quickly find the image they are searching for without having to open the source website. With the change, users will now have to click the “visit” button instead to view the image on the website. Basically, Google now wants users to visit the original website of the image that they are looking to download from the Internet, and bring revenue to their pages, thus helping their businesses. The change is also supposed to help protect copyrights and licenses of professional photographers and publishers. “For those asking, yes, these changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images this week,” the SearchLiaison tweeted. “They are designed to strike a balance between serving user needs and publisher concerns, both stakeholders we value.” It further added, “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.” The removal of the View Image button in Google Image search is due to the licensing deal between Google and Getty Images’ multi-year global licensing deal announced earlier this month. This deal allows Google to use Getty’s content within its various products and services. “This agreement between Getty Images and Google sets the stage for a very productive, collaborative relationship between our companies,” said Dawn Airey, CEO, Getty Images. “We will license our market leading content to Google, working closely with them to improve attribution of our contributors’ work and thereby growing the ecosystem.” In addition to removing the “View Image” button, Google has also removed the “Search by Image” button. However, a reverse image search can still be done, though, by dragging an image to the search bar. For those who are annoyed with Google’s move and looking to download a photo can still do so by right clicking the image in Google Images search result, then select “Copy Image Address” in Chrome (or similar button in any other web browser), and paste it into the address bar of another tab to open the photo. Alternatively, you can also right-click on the image and select the ‘Open image in new tab’ button. This will open the image in another tab and then you can go ahead and do the ‘Right-click-to-save-as’ procedure.
