[spacephysics]

I think google got into legal trouble for doing this (linking directly to the source image, instead of to the site)

Or they were at least threatened with legal action. I remember when it happened many of my friends were annoyed overnight

[skywhopper]

I doubt a legal case would succeed, and Google would know that. But the types of companies who threaten to sue over deep image linking are also the most likely to threaten not to sign contracts for content sharing with YouTube etc or for ad services. In other words, Google's other businesses create a liability for their search effectiveness.

[StableAlkyne]

If I recall right, it was over Getty Images, who were upset that people were right-clicking their images to save them from the image search (with the watermark) instead of clicking through to the page to be prompted to buy it

So rather than just delist Getty and solve the problem, they decided to make their product objectively worse