Getty, probably the largest image agency in the world, just picked a fight with the largest… well.. anything in the world – Google. In an open letter, Getty accuses google of depriving sites of their traffic by displaying high-res photo in their image search. And it does not stop there. Getty also filed a formal complaint with the European Union’s Competition Commission, there are more than just web pages filled with words flying around. Yoko Miyashita, General Counsel of Getty Images took a pretty wide stance and filed the complaint on behalf of “content creators around the world“. I am just gonna quote the claim here (omitting his forward which includes just about everything that good was ever accused of):
Mr. Miyashita explains:
Getty even did a video to explain it to us all https://vimeo.com/134243936 Of course this goes both ways, and I can see at least some reasons to having high-res images search, as thumbnails are not convenient to look at. Where you do you stand on this? Do you think image search should be restricted to thumbnails only? [gettyimages via dpreview]
