Google Images Update : Dear Google - We Hate it!

[hollow]

Continued from: [webmasterworld.com...]

---

Extremely irritating - makes the page hard to scan, as the mouseovers activate while you're just moving your mouse between other elements (scrolling and such). Also from a usability perspective, when an area highlights like that, I generally expect that to represent the target area of a hyperlink.

Seems like this is catering more for the whims of the developers than ease of use of the audience.

[flyerguy]

a) porn archives
b) image theft

LOL I run an agency that sells digital images, and I have to agree.

Heck the only thing I find images.google.com good for is looking up ex-girlfriends. If it comes up with a picture of a sasquatch, then I will put the mouse over it. If not, not interested. The medium is the message boys.. people look for pictures not contexts.

Y'all are webmasters therefore you can't see this change from the mom n' pop perspective. Picture search, picture results - I don't get the resistance to cleaning up the page.

ps. I deal with delivering images as a profession and I for one like the change.

[ALbino]

From a user perspective not having resolutions is incredibly annoying when there's several versions of the same pic.

[jimh009]

I hate this format. I use Google Images, or should say used, frequently.

URL info was nice, but I can live without that.

But I absolutely want to see the image size and resolution. I don't want to waste my time scrolling through each image to find how big the thing is.

Google ... what happened to USABILITY?

[itloc]

sorry to say that but:

Joe sixpack who klicks on google images is hardly able to navigate to page 2. Show him image resolution and stuff like "JPEG" and he is completely lost...

He enters something like "fluffy camel" (I resisted to write "bunny", cool ha?) and gets some results. Then he clicks on images and gets some camels...

Google is like coke... drink something else if you have advanced needs...

itloc

[ALbino]

Yeah, but Joe Sixpack is going to want the biggest fluffy camel possible, right? I mean, nobody likes small fluffy camels. At least not where I come from.

[webcenter]

I found something on the Mozilla forums to put it back to the old style.

I added the following to the Firefox user.js file:

user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "nojs");
user_pref("capability.policy.nojs.sites", "http://images.google.com");
user_pref("capability.policy.nojs.javascript.enabled", "noAccess");

[fabricator]

Yes even more unusable that before. I made a 3d front end for google images so I can get a closer look at those tiny thumbnails, now of course the perl script is completly broken.

Move mouse over image to get vital details, move mouse over link to open the page the image is on. Nicely adds to RSI injuries too.

There are only really three things you want for images 1) resolution 2) filesize 3) domain name. A nice high resolution image with obviously minimal compression hosted on wikipedia is far more usefull that a copyrighted image of a news website.

As others said in the other thread, searching for images on a topic will find real articles, where as a text search will turn up all sorts of idle chat and random noise. Another point is when you get 10 copies of the same image and want to find the original site.

A huge step backwards in usability, more mystery meat navigation.

[flyerguy]

Are you saying you use Google Images so much you're going to get carpal tunnel syndrome because you have to roll over an image?

You do know that you can license stock photography for a few dollars now. What kind of projects subsist on appropriating free images? Other than homework or a charity. How many of these projects come up in a day where you need pictures so badly you're clicking like mad?

Unless you're cranking out MFA sites daily, or are a particularly image-heavy blogger, I just can't see the hype here.

[Clark]

Good point on usability for advanced users vs regular users. By now Google should have more advanced options on all avenues of search so the advanced webmaster can customize the experience. If they had kept their laser focus, they would have done this.

There is still room for the next google.

e.g. on reg. search:
Sort results with one click...by url, by title, by date
e.g. on image search:
enter dimensions you are searching for, sort by width, by height, by url, by title of page, etc..

[ALbino]

I use Google Images every day, and never for web design or blogging or whatever. You see a chick on TV you think is hot? Google Images. You want to know what the new hip car looks like? Google Images. You can't remember which ancient monument is which? Google Images.

IMHO Google Images is useless for SEO, sure it generates traffic, but it has a conversion rate approaching zero and uses a ton of bandwidth. My complaints are purely from a user perspective, and I imagine most others are as well.

[jomaxx]

Good point on usability for advanced users vs regular users.

I disagree. Even "Joe Sixpack" understands that some images are larger than others, and that site A is different than site B. Heck, with Google images you often have the situation where many images come from the same website, even the same page. Not too obvious if you can't see the text.

[kapow]

I hate Google images because of the BIG drain on my host resource without any real possibility of a return. It messes up my clients stats, they think their site is getting really popular when HALF of the damn queries are from Google images! The simple explanation I tell my clients is "ignore those 'enquiries', they don't count".

[ALbino]

Just robots.txt Google Images out if you don't want the traffic.

[DrDoc]

a) porn archives
b) image theft

There are few - if any - honest legitimate uses of image archives.

As long as we don't forget the fact that there are sites offering free images (legitimately) ... Not to mention how certain art images are also not copyrightable and, therefore, not stealable. Finding product images was also mentioned, and that would have to be considered legitimate use. I also can't count all the times I looked up some appropriate images in response to someone's very legitimate question. In fact, I can actually think of many instances where use of Google Images is perfectly logical, honest, legitimate ... (I was going to say: I guess the ability to find good uses depends on how you yourself search. But even as a tongue-in-cheek comment, I figured I better not. ;))

That being said ... I think one of the reasons why Google removed the information is to encourage advanced users to use the advanced tools. "Show only Large Images." I can't imagine that function being used nearly enough with the sizes and such showing.

Now, although this may explain Google's move, I still disagree with it. Usability for certain image queries tanked.

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by engine. New thread at: google/3258933.htm [webmasterworld.com]
3:44 pm on Feb. 21, 2007 (utc 0)