Google has made a deal with stock-photo agency Getty to end their legal battle. To curb the lifting of copyrighted images from its platform, Google has removed the “view image” button from its image search results. The two companies reported last week announced a partnership that “will allow Google to continue carrying Getty-owned photographs in its image and web search results.” You can now only get images from the respective website on which the photo is embedded.
Thus to get the right image, you need to wait for the website to load and then roll through it to find the image. This is in response to the growing pressure on the company by various lobby groups of rights owners. The removal of the image button is an agreement to protect itself against license costs for the display of pictures in the search engine.
The change is essentially meant to frustrate users. – report
They have been under pressure from photographers and publishers feeling that such image search allowed people to access the action of purloining their pictures, and the removal of the view image button is one of many changes being made in response.
Fortunately, there’s still at least one way around it, right click select open image in new tab or view image and you will still open up the full-size picture. – Reports
As for the changes, the users will face certain restrictions, as the photos can no longer be accessed directly provided by free licenses. This will affect the Wikipedia image database and other platforms offering free content. The changes will make searching images much difficult.
