I get that Google made this change to settle with Getty Images - and I have some gripes about the PR-speak and implementation on Google's behalf - but I keep coming back to the same question. What grounds does Getty even have in a case like that?

Getty offered the images up on the public domain. Why does Google have any obligation to direct them to a webpage instead of the image itself? Isn't that Getty's problem? The "view image" button sent users to Getty's own servers, so why should Google take any heat over a feature Getty supports?

I think it's much shadier that Google is hosting copies of those copyrighted images for use in their own search tool, but this settlement does nothing to resolve that. That Verge article even posited a workaround which just uses the Goolge-hosted copy of the image! Isn't this the kind of stuff Google has invested millions of dollars into copyright-detection AI to avoid? And wouldn't images like that be covered by the DMCA anyways?

I obviously don't have any legal experience and copyright law is a nightmare, but I don't understand why Google would have make any compromises here aside from complying with DMCA requests.