>> Not because the feature is gone but because they are daft enough to assume that they can sell this as an improvement to their users and anyone will believe it.

Imagine how users would feel if they said "We're making this change because people keep ripping off images via our search. Since the public can't be trusted to follow copyright law, we're not going to make it so easy to break."

I'm sure the public would eat that s* up and ask for seconds.

If nothing else, it would be refreshingly honest.

The issue is about closing a loophole. If it was framed that way people would still be upset, but not as upset in the same way as being treated like idiots.

I'm waiting for the first person to sue google because chrome allows people to view the source of the page violating their copyright, or right click save as to save an image from the site and thus violating copyright and google pitching that as an improvement to the browser

If the alternative would have been to disable the feature altogether, then this is an improvement.

But to make this clear, they'd probably have to disable the feature for 2 days "because of the Getty case", then come up with this as a compromise.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, but have nothing to do with that stuff nor any special insights)

To be more precise, eliminating convenience rather than removing the feature as a whole is preferable to removal, not an "improvement".

As an aside, I've often used "View Image" to access the image when the page itself didn't contain it. This actually hurts not only user experience, but also the actual success of the platform at its intended purpose.

I dont understand why they couldnt disable that feature for only companies that wanted it (through robots.txt) or redacted it some and gave the user to drop taht website from your search.

They aren't, they don't, and they simply don't care. That's the defining feature of PR-speak: they're lying, they know they're lying, they know you know they're lying, and they just don't care.

They have to say that, no matter whether they mean it.

What else could they say that wouldn't anger Getty Images?

"We're changing this to comply with a court order / settlement." seems fine to me. I don't think anyone would be angry at them, since they didn't want to do the change nor would be "lying" to users about why they do it.

But then they wouldn't get to act like they are masters of all they survey. This way, they can continue to claim that they are always entirely in control. At least to themselves.

It's probably as banal as trying to limit future lawsuits by restricting publicity on successful past ones.

Indeed that would be a much more elegant way to go about it.