The image sharing wars are heating up even more. First, Instagram lost a ton of followers due to their TOS agreement change. Then a couple of days ago, we reported on a new deal between Google and Getty Images. When Google reported on the new deal on their Drive blog, they announced that “5,000 new photos of nature, weather, animals, sports, food, education, technology, music and 8 other categories are now available for your use in Docs, Sheets, and Slides.” But they weren’t clear on where the images were coming from.
Eventually it was discovered that they were coming from iStock photo. And the concerned comments numbered in the thousands. As a response to this move, users are organizing, and citing February 2nd as their very own, “D-Day.” At the time of reporting on this news, the thread is around 10 pages long. The users think that it is about quick profit and greed.
The users in the thread have mixed feelings. Some don’t want to deactivate all of their images, others will only do some, and more steadfast users are going to go all in and deactivate everything. Of any story in the image sharing world right now, this is the one to watch. iStock photo and stock photos to begin with aren’t very profitable these days, but they’ve sure angered a lot of users.
