This sort of thing is why I haven't completely lost hope in the web, yet. The power is still in the hands of the user. Don't like a site's style? Fix it yourself. Feature you like been removed? Write your own extension to put it back.

Sure it's work, but ultimately no entity on the web can absolutely control how you choose to consume their content, only try and make it difficult for you.

It's great but at the same time, fixes and tweaks like this are only going to really be used by savvy users.

The majority won't notice the change I reckon.

This bookmarklet is another example of the point I've always made on HN about the benefits (versus the much-discussed downsides) of the DOM and CSS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16335816

Google seems to taken up a mantra of "if it ain't broke, break it" lately.

If something seems just stupid, it is always a good idea to try to understand the change. This one wasn't really voluntarily [1] (Though I agree for some recent changes, it seems impossible to find a reasonable explanation :/ )

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16388833

As far as we know, Google isn't willing to pay content providers, while Microsoft is. So Bing still has the functionality, but Google not.

Google is religiously avoiding doing things that don't scale. Just like hiring people to do customer support for their products, paying content providers doesn't scale.

Why bother paying Getty if it means you'll have to pay other people when they eventually sue you too. That just means you'll incur more an more expenses as people sue/threaten you. Far cheaper to just forgo the grounds for being sued altogether.

DuckDuckGo still has the functionality, but I don't think they pay content providers. From that I conclude that it's not just a function of "willing to pay vs not", but that "got sued" also plays a role.

Content providers in this case is every web page that is indexed for image search. Microsoft might have contracts in place with image services (getty, alamy, and whatnot), but I have my doubts that they pay every photographer's blog who's images they display in their image search.

They used to be pass through of Bing. Don’t know if still case. But when that was true, they’d be able to do what Bing did.

More likely the other haven't just lost in litigation like Google has. The same group or someone similar may turn their attention to Bing, DDG, and others, now that this first case has completed in their favour. Unless of course the traffic through other search engines is not deemed significant enough to warrant the lawyer's expensive time, though the first case having been won will presumably reduce the potential costs of future cases (or make the search providers capitulate to "please turn this off voluntarily or..." without the need for even that effort).

Lately?

"If we break it, you fix it"

Also useful, boorkmarklet to make all text black:

    javascript:(function(){var%20i,x;for(i=0;x=document.getElementsByTagName("*")[i];++i)x.style.color="#000000";})();

and to allow text selection (I manically select text while reading, sorry fellow office inhabitants),

    javascript:(function(){function%20allowTextSelection(){window.console&&console.log('allowTextSelection');var%20style=document.createElement('style');style.type='text/css';style.innerHTML='*,p,div{user-select:text%20!important;-moz-user-select:text%20!important;-webkit-user-select:text%20!important;}';document.head.appendChild(style);var%20elArray=document.body.getElementsByTagName('*');for(var%20i=0;i<elArray.length;i++){var%20el=elArray[i];el.onselectstart=el.ondragstart=el.ondrag=el.oncontextmenu=el.onmousedown=el.onmouseup=function(){return%20true};if(el%20instanceof%20HTMLInputElement&&['text','password','email','number','tel','url'].indexOf(el.type.toLowerCase())>-1){el.removeAttribute('disabled');el.onkeydown=el.onkeyup=function(){return%20true};}}}allowTextSelection();})();

Thanks! Updated the bookmarklet (used both IE and FF methods from the link):

    javascript:(function(){function%20allowTextSelection(){document.onselectstart = null; document.onmousedown = null; document.onmouseup = null; window.console&&console.log('allowTextSelection');var%20style=document.createElement('style');style.type='text/css';style.innerHTML='*,p,div{user-select:text%20!important;-moz-user-select:text%20!important;-webkit-user-select:text%20!important;}';document.head.appendChild(style);var%20elArray=document.body.getElementsByTagName('*');for(var%20i=0;i<elArray.length;i++){var%20el=elArray[i];el.onselectstart=el.ondragstart=el.ondrag=el.oncontextmenu=el.onmousedown=el.onmouseup=function(){return%20true};if(el%20instanceof%20HTMLInputElement&&['text','password','email','number','tel','url'].indexOf(el.type.toLowerCase())>-1){el.removeAttribute('disabled');el.onkeydown=el.onkeyup=function(){return%20true};}}}allowTextSelection();})();

I was asking myself why this was there in HN top, headed to Google Images and yes, it dosen't provide a direct link to the image anymore :/ This is going to be very harder for a normal user to download an image at full resoultion. Well done with this script :)

Thanks, this was just a quick fix though, a userscript that puts the button back where it was would be better.

I created it just ago, though it's not a userscript: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391196

I linked to from my repo and my comment on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/7xvdkk/googl...

I'd add the direct link as a parent comment if I were you so people can vote it up, as this is what I found and used earlier after discovering the reason for the disappearance. For those wondering it does actually include a userscript version which is appreciated.

Nice work! I'll add a link to it from my repo

I am missing the point why this bookmarklet is needed. You right click the preview image that google gives and either 'Open Image in new tab' or 'Copy image address', or even 'Save Image'. Actually Googles change makes it easier to handle images, since you get directly the original in the preview view, instead of some cached version... what am I missing?

I'd agree. It saves a click (instead of right click, left click, it's just a left click on the bookmarklet). But it's not applicable for mobile and takes up space on your bookmarks bar. I think the next step to replace the missing functionality would be a Chrome extension to add the button back.

Already done by @devunt (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16391285) : https://github.com/devunt/make-gis-great-again

I think it's related to https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/15/17017864/google-removes-v....

This whole thing is silly, and I think the google image search team brought it on themselves.

For a while, on mobile Google Image Search result pages, it was impossible to find a link to the image in its actual context in the actual site. Like, you'd Google Image search something and see something interesting in an SRP, but then you couldn't find out what it was. Maybe there was a way to do it, but the UI was too opaque to figure it out.

This obviously peeved some people off, and now the Image Results page had to pivot too hard in the other direction. Whereas if they'd made both options clear and visible, likely they never would've faced whatever internal pushback they had from rightsholders and advertisers about GISRP's terrible UI.

And now we're working around this awful UI even further.

Can you please not make the link an enormous button? I'm having quite a difficult time dragging it to my bookmarks since it covers 1/4 of my screen, making it really hard to see where I want to put it.

Never mind, I tested it on Firefox, it sucks. Will fix, thanks for reporting.

On Chromium I don't have this issue (https://i.imgur.com/I4PvK4l.png). What browser are you using?

I pushed a fix

So fast to come up with a workaround! Great

Thanks. What a stupid change on Google's part.

They got sued, and this was one of the consequences

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16388833

Makes sense, they did what they had to.

Ok well the bookmarklet will see a lot of use. :)

Works on Safari Mobile (with “Request Desktop Site”).

But even better: Google is still linking to the image on the mobile page. Just long press on the search result image in Mobile Safari, then press Copy to get the direct image URL, then open the URL. Wonder how long that will work.

You're right, I forgot to add a viewimage.min.js. I tried on Chrome mobile, but it just does a Google search, didn't know inline javascript worked on mobile browsers.

Here's the bookmarklet source for now:

javascript:void%20function(){function%20isElementVisible(el){var%20rect=el.getBoundingClientRect(),vWidth=window.innerWidth||doc.documentElement.clientWidth,vHeight=window.innerHeight||doc.documentElement.clientHeight,efp=function(x,y){return%20document.elementFromPoint(x,y)};return%20rect.right%3C0||rect.bottom%3C0||rect.left%3EvWidth||rect.top%3EvHeight%3F!1:el.contains(efp(rect.left,rect.top))||el.contains(efp(rect.right,rect.top))||el.contains(efp(rect.right,rect.bottom))||el.contains(efp(rect.left,rect.bottom))}%22undefined%22==typeof%20window.isElementVisible;{var%20imgs=document.querySelectorAll(%22.irc_mi%22);imgs.forEach(function(img){isElementVisible(img)%26%26window.open(img.src)})}}();

Another alternative (works automatically):

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/straight-to-full-s...

How does it work? Asking since I'm a Firefox user.

you can see the functionality in the screenshots. When you click on a google image search result it open directly the image.

This is perfect - thanks.

For some reason, I find it getting harder to find relevant pictures using google images. It almost always messes up what I want by showing the most popular / vaguely relevant / search history based something.

It's been broken on iOS (maybe all mobile?) for the longest now...

There is a "Full-sized image" link in the details of images on Firefox Android. Maybe the change applies only within the USA?

There are tons of use cases where you might want the actual image. Some are completely legal, some might not be.

Some usecases I’m thinking of: printed handouts for a (kid’s birthday) party, a picture for an informal non-public Powerpoint presentation, setting the picture as your desktop background, printing/viewing a large diagram, etc. E.g. if I search for “pyramid”, why would I need an article to go along with it? Also in some countries printing for educational/school uses is legal.

Disclaimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice.

There are several such countries, here is a list: http://teflpedia.com/index.php?title=Copyright_in_English_la...

You can google for more info.

Some more points:

- not all images have copyright (public domain images, most images by NASA, etc).

- printing out things is certainly something people do, why do you assume that’s trolling?

- whether copyright and copyright infringement are right/wrong/moral/immoral is a discussion for a different time

And in the end, people might just not care whether their desktop background is properly licensed or not. Is yours?

And what would you actually do about the kids birthday invite with a Mickey Mouse on it?

I only ever use the image search for finding a high quality Album Cover (I still end up ripping my CDs these days, and prefer what I can find on GI than iTunes Auto Cover).

You mean you don't make slideshows of cute kittens for your own personal enjoyment, everyone is using that feature for this! /s

Some JavaScript code saved as a bookmark. When you click on the bookmark, the JavaScript code gets executed.