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Google removes View Image button in image search results
August 19, 2025
In a move that will no doubt frustrate many people,Googleremoved the View Image button in all Google image searches today. If you visitimages.google.comand perform a search query, selecting an image will no longer give you the option to view that image on its own.
The news broke from the official Google Search Liaison Twitter account. In the statementabout removing the View Image button, an emphasis was made that the Visit button remains. Now, when you search for an image, you will have to visit the website in its entirety to grab the image for your own use.
This move was likely made in response tothe partnership Google made with Getty Imagesjust days ago, which was put in place to help reduce copyright infringement on the internet.
With the amount of copyrighted material that gets used online without any accreditation or permission, sites have already been making images harder and harder to download. Many sites convert traditional image formats like JPEG and PNG to different formats that browsers will not allow you to save easily. Traditionally, you would be given the option to “Save image as…” when right-clicking an image, but with these new formats that option does not appear.
Granted, it is still somewhat easy to open up the browser’s code explorer and find the raw image link that way. But for the vast amount of web users, this would be beyond their skill level. What Google is really trying to do here is stop the average user from having an easy way to download images they don’t own and of which they are not a rights holder.
Savvy Google image search users will notice that the “Search by Image” button has been removed as well. However,you can still do a reverse image searchfrom the search bar of Google Images, and by right-clicking an image and performing a Google search.
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