Try Reading ALL The Words People
Folks, try reading all the words in the article, not just scanning it and jumping on what you THINK it's saying rather than what it IS. In this case "high res large-format content" is the important part.
Getty's issue isn't with Google's image search per se, they are quite happy for their images to be indexed and listed by Google. What they are taking issue with is the change from displaying just thumbnails on the search results page to showing high res images.
Before this change Google gave you an easy way to find the images but you had to go to Getty to access (buy) the high res version. This was good for everyone. Google had more images, so better search results, so more users, so more tracking/ad-serving data collection. Getty were happy too as more people found their images, followed links to their site and bought the high res versions enabling them to support the photographers who take them.
After the change Google still get everything they had before, plus a bit more on top as having the high res versions made their results richer. Getty on the other had get shafted as people can just steal their images rather than having to pay for them. And if no-one pays for them, who's going to pay the photographers to take them?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
