Today Google is stripping down an important image search related feature. The ‘View Image’ button and the Search by Image button are gone and nothing could’ve made the copyright owners happier.
Google has maintained its search dominance by indexing the world wide web the best and by making its search interface extremely intuitive for users.
The move is aimed at reducing copyright infringement and wanton stealing of images indexed by the search engine. Earlier, the View Image button would conveniently send image seekers directly to an image, bypassing the website (or rather the webpage) on which the image appeared.
Website owners also hated this Google Image search bypassing because visitors weren’t allowed to visit their websites, thereby not allowing them the opportunity to show them any online ads and monetization the visit.
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Google was forced to drop the View Image button due to a legal settlement with Getty Images, one of the world’s largest stock photo agency. Google also entered a strategic partnership with Getty, where the search giant will host Getty content through its search pages.
According to a message sent to iStock, Getty owned photo service; “Google has agreed to make changes in Image Search, including making the copyright disclaimer more prominent and removing the view image button.” Both these changes are now clearly visible on the image search result page, as shown above.
Users will continue to be able to search for high quality, large-sized images — but instead of opening them with the click of a button, the process will take a few extra clicks.
This means that not much is changing in Google but it still covers the fact that the website and copyright owners would be happy and satisfied that their visitors are gonna visit the websites thereby allowing them the opportunity to show them online ads and monetizing the visit.
