> using the context menu to “Open Image in New tab” essentially dos the same thing so the functionality is still there.

No, actually “view image” loaded the source image at source resolution while viewing the image loaded into the DOM would show you the re-encoded, lower resolution, smaller Google thumbnail version.

Edit: actually it seems that Google has simultaneously deployed an update that makes the actual source image open so that might actually work.

What I'm seeing on the current site is that the large preview seen on clicking a thumbnail is the original image, loaded from the original server and scaled in CSS.

Nothing's really changed in terms of capability; the UI is just a bit more awkward.

That can't be true - or it would be very taxing to browse a page of 20MP+ images.

Only images you click on (so that the larger preview pops up, with the Visit button and which used to have the View image button) load the original images, rescaled with CSS. The grid of smaller images consists of thumbnails.

I tested it and this doesn't seem to happen. Maybe it's only for small images or is on a best effort basis.

All images you click on are fully loaded, images you don't click on are Google-hosted thumbnails. No exceptions.

This isn't true for me. The clicked on images, at least of high resolution, are data urls under 1 MP. Exactly like the thumbnails from the grid.

Are you sure you're actually clicking the images first, so they're brought up in the image viewer box with the other options available, and then right-clicking -> View Image/Open Image/whatever?

If you are, then that's very strange, and I have no idea why that's happening for you and not for anybody else. What browser and OS are you using?

Yes that’s what I’m doing but it’s not that strange, because it's what I would expect. It is too slow to load many such large images automatically.

But FYI, this is Safari on OS X.

> It is too slow to load many such large images automatically.

The images don't all load automatically, though; an image only begins to load when you click on it individually, opening it within the viewer, on a Google Images results page.

Here[0] is a screenshot example. Clicking on 'Open image in new tab' (or 'View Image' in Firefox) will open the image[1] directly, and inspecting the page's source will reveal it is simply an <img> element with the URL as the src value. The size ought to make no difference; I tried up to 10 MP.

It may take a second to load, but that's how Google Images works: once an image is open in the viewer, it is quite literally just embedding the unadulterated source image within the page. It has been this way since at least 2010.

(Unless, of course, there is behaviour unique to Safari or OS X: of that I have no idea.)

[0]: https://i.imgur.com/mYAFr0J.jpg

[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Winnersh...

I agree you have no idea :) it works for you and not for me. Google could be A/B testing for all we know.

In this comment and especially in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16323396, you've violated the site rules badly. You've also posted a bunch of unsubstantive comments and ignored our request to stop doing this.

We ban accounts that behave this way, so would you please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and comment only in the spirit of this site from now on? That means being scrupulously respectful of others, and generally not posting unless you have something substantive to say and can do so thoughtfully.

I am not sure, but read somewhere on HN Google related article comments that what Google does is first load all image search page with own encoded compressed thumbnails, enlarged by css, and then async fetches the real images, replaces the thumbnails, and scales down by css to show as same size of thumnail.

Edit: in this exact thread, another user too made same observation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16390022

Yeah, showing me the image at full resolution when I "Open image in new tab".

It was already like that and has been like that for years.