[HN Gopher] Google Images Restored
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Google Images Restored
Author : alphabet9000
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-01-16 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| tiagod wrote:
| Great work. It's usable again, finally.
| a2tech wrote:
| Is there something similar for safari?
| gchokov wrote:
| Someone in Google's UX and Design department, really needs go out
| and breathe some fresh air. Is it only me, who dislikes 95% of
| the design decision of Google products in the recent years?
| clintonc wrote:
| The main changes this extension addresses were made because of
| a settlement with Getty Images.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...
| Lammy wrote:
| The worst part of the settlement isn't even the UI changes
| but how the image search results now seem to favor showing
| Youtube video frames above showing regular images from non-
| Google websites.
|
| I guess they get to pass the buck to the video uploaders who
| have asserted (truthfully or not) that they have a right to
| upload whatever they're uploading and that they "grant to
| YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free,
| sublicensable and transferable license to use that Content
| (including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative
| works, display and perform it) in connection with the Service
| and YouTube's (and its successors' and Affiliates') business"
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| They're in good company though. UI/UX in general is going to
| hell. Not just in $big_corp, but nearly everywhere.
|
| I think that's mainly because we have UI/UX as a dedicated
| function now. It's a job that seems to attract people that
| don't know how software _works_. This results in "uncanny" UX
| that looks similar enough but just doesn't work the way it
| should.
|
| Maybe I'm just getting old though!
| 101008 wrote:
| I am interested in your point of view. Care to expand?
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| I'm not the parent poster but I see where they're coming
| from - form used to purely _follow_ function in computer
| UI/UX (as in most engineering fields) but now it's been
| delegated to "creatives" who, by virtue of their skill set,
| put form first.
|
| Overall "betterness" is subjective, but speaking as someone
| who uses a computer as a _tool_ I can honestly say I 'd
| prefer it to function pragmatically than look pretty, if
| the prettiness requires sacrificing of pragmatism in some
| way.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| I'm not sure I see any reason to expect or believe that
| engineers would make good ui/ux decisions. It's not clear
| to me that choices that are simple for engineering are
| necessarily even aligned with ultimately being
| functional.
|
| A good ui/ux specialist will be interested in reducing
| error rates and improving ease of discovery and use
| through affordances and good organization of information
| and actions. Obviously other business interest may
| conflict with those goals but those same interests are
| capable of corrupting engineering as well.
|
| And I don't think ui/ux work is as recent as this is all
| making it sound. Perhaps it is more common now even for
| orgs where their bread and butter isn't software but
| ultimately making tools useful and safe and accessible
| predates software entirely.
| catillac wrote:
| I am a designer and my opinion is that they're micro optimizing
| with A/B testing to such a degree that they miss other
| significantly different paths that would be better overall.
| grenoire wrote:
| It really does seem a local/global maxima problem with the
| way they're trying to improve. I think they've been locking
| themselves into the local maxima, and at their scale it's
| probably really hard to expand the search beyond what's 'safe
| and known.'
| toper-centage wrote:
| Google is data driven and AB tests the hell out of their
| features, so I would assume these changes make them money
| somehow. Your personal preferences or anyone else's is merely a
| very small data point in their design process.
| thotsBgone wrote:
| Yes, companies are profit-driven always. Not customer-
| satisfaction driven, unless that's what will bring them the
| most profit (especially true for newer, smaller companies).
|
| This makes me wonder if there is some structure similar to a
| corporation which would maximise something besides profit,
| without either being out-competed by a corporation or turning
| into one.
| ghaff wrote:
| Competition ("out-compete") implies competition on some
| metric such as profitability. So, if that's the metric,
| then they'll be profit-driven. Of course, profitability can
| be optimized for over different time horizons--even if
| speculatively. For public companies, time horizons tend to
| be relatively short, or at least quarter-to-quarter
| profitability is important.
|
| A private company, however structured, can define out-
| competing however its owners want to so long as it can pay
| its bills and employees.
| fbelzile wrote:
| I wish it was money they optimized for. It's probably
| engagement or some other obscure marketing metric.
|
| The problem with that is if they introduce a bug that
| requires you to refresh the page more often. All they'd see
| is an up-tick in "engagement" and keep the change with the
| bug. I think it happened to me with Facebook page
| notifications and not being able to clear them properly, at
| least on Firefox...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Doctors used to believe that basic hygiene was unnecessary
| despite having enough information in theory to figure out
| this wasn't so.
|
| The presumption that someone in theory has access to lots of
| information and therefore is making the best or even good
| decisions on some dimensions by virtue of the their access to
| data is poorly considered. It is entirely possible to be
| smart and possessed of good data and still use it poorly.
| People are flawed so companies made of of people are also
| flawed.
|
| Google image search is a poor product not worth using
| compared to bing.
| Triv888 wrote:
| The only thing that I like about gmail.com is the search
| feature and the fact that most of my accounts are tied to it.
| But I use Thunderbird for getting my emails...
| kungito wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the big corps are changing the design
| based on some toxic metrics where they don't really care if we,
| a small demographic of power users, get annoyed all the time
| userbinator wrote:
| "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not
| everything that can be counted, counts."
| 6357357457 wrote:
| Just use the Yandex image search.
|
| Yandex hasn't yet removed or crippled its face recognition-
| enhanced image similarity search capability like Google and Bing
| did (probably because women complained that it turned up their
| old nudes/ludes), and Yandex doesn't exhibit bizarre racial
| biases like this:
|
| https://archive.rebeccablacktech.com/g/thread/76372135/
|
| Sad that Americans have to use a Russian search engine to get
| away from Google/Bing censorship, bias, and politicization.
| zkmon wrote:
| Forget UX, the image search itself _doesn't_ work. Search for
| some known person's name. 90% of the image results will be from
| the side bars on LinkedIn page of that person, which have no
| relation to the search key words.
| flokie wrote:
| This including no results from Pinterest is a great combo
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I really like this in theory but if an adware company someday
| buys your addon I could be compromised. It's easier to use bing
| image search which has been better than google for images for a
| while now.
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| TFA is a github page, friend. If you truly care about
| compromise as stated, just build the add-on from source. No
| reason to point to nonexistent future threat vectors.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Do you remember Stylish? It was a very popular firefox/chrome
| addon with 2 million users which was sold to an ad company
| that started using it to siphon off users data.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2018/07/styli...
|
| The threat isn't nonexistent and having the source doesn't
| help as much as you might imagine. Most people can't read the
| source in any meaningful way and those that can might still
| trivially miss something malicious. In practice its only as
| safe as the meaningful analysis by skilled hands makes it in
| actuality. Realistically you would be lucky if someone
| notices several months after it started siphoning off your
| data and only if its egregious enough to get it kicked off of
| the extensions store.
| gpmcadam wrote:
| This is good but what annoys me most about Google lately is that
| all searches turn out to be product searches instead of images of
| a thing. Just makes me trust the results less and less.
| meibo wrote:
| Nice! The current image search is still a great product, with
| some filters, especially with the "find by image" stuff - this
| takes it to another level.
|
| Can't fathom how Getty was able to make them remove the "view
| image" button. Thanks copyright.
| errantspark wrote:
| Fuck Getty Images. Fuck IP law. Fuck copyright. All that shit
| needs a massive refactor. I can't bear to think about how much
| harm has been done to software and human reality in general by
| lawyers and MBAs seeking to extract the maximum amount of value
| from things.
|
| I'm glad things like this exist, but so sad that they need to.
|
| EDIT: and as one commenter astutely pointed out, fuck Pintrest
| too, a perfect example of the hubris of SEO focused trashes with
| no morals or sense of personal responsibility; degrading the
| commons for their own gain
| amelius wrote:
| You forgot to mention Pinterest.
| gkoberger wrote:
| What's wrong with Getty? They spend a lot of money to take
| pictures, and other people pay money to use them. How would you
| change their business model?
|
| EDIT: I hadn't realized that Getty is the reason for the
| removal of the view image button! I stand by my comment in
| general, however I do think removing that button is crappy.
| markdown wrote:
| Getty charges $1000 for public domain photos. Fuck 'em!
|
| EDIT: They also fraudulently claim to own public domain
| photos and legally threaten people who use them, demanding
| payment.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I don't understand your point. If you hate copyright and
| IP, then you inherently also have to believe Getty should
| be allowed to take public domain photos (or someone else's
| photos) and sell them.
| markdown wrote:
| > If you hate copyright and IP
|
| Are you responding to someone else? Wrong thread? Because
| I haven't expressed that sentiment here.
|
| > you inherently also have to believe Getty should be
| allowed to take public domain photos (or someone else's
| photos) and sell them.
|
| Are you responding to someone else? Wrong thread? Because
| I never said they shouldn't be allowed to profit off
| public domain photos.
|
| There is profit, and then there's just fucking people
| over. $1000 for a photo they didn't take and didn't pay
| for is just disgusting. All it does is restrict access to
| historical photos to 99% of the world, allowing only the
| very rich access to this window into our past.
| matttb wrote:
| I'd never heard of this before so I searched it and the
| first result turned up this[0] (see lines 2-4/Exhibit A).
| Big jump from selling public domain images to seeking out
| payment for public domain images.
|
| [0]
| https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3001353/Filed-
| Com...
| Xelbair wrote:
| What's worse - instead of fixing their shit, they bloody sue
| google.
| therealmarv wrote:
| Just use Yandex Image search. It also has a reverse image
| functionality and it does not censor as much as Google Images.
| ZoomStop wrote:
| It also allows for searching by size which of course Google
| removed with updates but helps greatly when searching for
| icons, wallpapers, etc.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| But why that version? It wasn't much different from the current
| version. I preferred the version before, when the page didn't
| automatically expand and collapse and scroll around in a
| disorienting way.
| hartator wrote:
| At SerpApi, we'll be happy to sponsor this! Reach to me via email
| julien _at_ serpapi.com.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Really missed that view image button especially for Pinterest
| images that are pure spam
| javawizard wrote:
| That button was removed in response to a lawsuit from Getty:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...
| tzfld wrote:
| Is there anything good done by Getty since its existence?
| kyriakos wrote:
| They keep buying off smaller stock image platforms as well
| killing competition
| natch wrote:
| Would love to see somebody make an image search site that
| lets you filter all that stuff out. It would be fine with me
| as a user if it respected no-hotlinking policies too. But the
| filter could just omit paywalled / registrationwalled sites
| and those that do trickery like obnoxious watermarks or
| showing one image to the search crawler and another one to
| site visitors.
|
| I have nothing against sites trying to make money. But
| sometimes I want to see just the stuff that is straight out
| there and isn't wrapped up in dark patterns.
| poisonborz wrote:
| There were multiple scripts and extensions popping up to
| restore the feature right after it was removed. Eg.
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image/jpcmhce...
| ffpip wrote:
| Just right click the image and press 'I'.
| kyriakos wrote:
| I don't think you get the full size original image
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| You are. But wait for the image to load or you'll get the
| thumbnail.
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(page generated 2021-01-16 23:00 UTC)