Google Images Has Become Harder to Use

I thought I'd noticed some changes on Google image search in the last few days.  Now it has been confirmed — in response to complaints by Getty Images, Google has made it more difficult to grab images from its Image Search facility.  This is a new development to me, and I have not looked for workarounds at this stage.

Anger at Google image search 'peace deal' - BBC News

We can still set a size parameter

The difference appease to be that when you find an image which has a pixel size larger than your screen resolution, you can't now click on a View button and access the full resolution version directly from Google.  We now have to click on the image which opens the containing web page — the same as the old Visit button which I think has also been taken away.  This puts us at the mercy of the site developer as to whether we can click to expand that image, and from there, right click and Copy Image.  I was able to do that with my test image.  I guess this gives stock sites like Getty Images the option to make their images more difficult to steal, but I am not sure how much sympathy I have.  Organizations like iStock have been hijacking Google Image Search for years by cynically using Google's search algorithms to have their own images flood the first trillion places in an image search. 

We are now going to need to use the Usage Rights options, and chose one of the reuse options.  This bypasses all those stock images from search results, but you still have to jump through the same hoops of visiting the containing website, and finding and copying the image from there.

I am not sure at this stage how Google's reverse image search has been affected.  The article says that Google's Search by image tool has been removed, but I can still use the right click Search Google for image plugin.  The one below is in Chrome, but I think there will be equivalent for most browsers.

That takes you to the same page as previously (for now)

And to the all sizes as before, but if you click on any of those size options, you now have to go through the visit page and locate that image process.

So Dave's SFTW threads are going to take a tiny bit longer to respond to, and those of use who use Google images for source images for composites are going to have to work a little bit harder.