You may have noticed last week that Google quickly tweaked its Image Search feature, removing the ‘View Image’ button, and the option to search by image. It seemed like a distinct step backward, and an annoying one, too.

Google cheerily tweeted about the change, claiming it was “to help connect users and useful websites” — meaning, of course, that instead of allowing users to simply link to the picture without any housing context, they will instead be pushed to the website on which the photo resides, “so users can see images in the context of the webpages they’re on.”

Of course, this is quite counter-initiative reasoning, especially considering those looking for a photo of a birthday cake don’t care which Women’s Weekly-recipe article the photo originated from. They just want the photo.

Of course, copyright holders of these particular photos aren’t thrilled with the ease in which Google allows users to bypass context and save these photos. Getty Images were the largest of these copyright holders to have an issue. They sued, Google settled, and this is the real reason, as they promptly admitted.

“For those asking, yes, these changes came about in part due to our settlement with Getty Images this week”, they tweeted, pointing to a Verge article. “They are designed to strike a balance between serving user needs and publisher concerns, both stakeholders we value.”

So there you go. This is great for copyright holders, but bad for users. Circumvent this particular change by right clicking the photo and opening it in a new tab. Of course, this extra step will prove too annoying for some.

Stay tuned for their eventual blocking of the ‘screenshot’ feature.

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