Google Shopping: Upload Your Content Without Watermarks or Be Banned

http://pastebin.com/TN2tzRnE

by johnnyg • 13 years ago

77 118 13 years ago

pastebin.com

mschuster91• 13 years ago

Is this a message initiated by a human, or is it just some algorithm sending it?

Is the reply-address one of those "smart" robots or can a real human be reached there?

johnnyg5• 13 years ago

I'm a human and I'm really going to lose business over this policy.

jonknee4• 13 years ago

How so? If you make money through Google Shopping you should follow the rules. If you don't, well then no loss to you.

timfrietas• 13 years ago

Can you explain in more detail? I am actually curious, because as a customer I hate the watermarks. Do you think they help with brand awareness, or driving traffic to your own site?

ivanca2• 13 years ago

Link-bait; It should say "Google Adwords" not "Google".

johnnyg5• 13 years ago

I've edited the title to specify Google Shopping.

moocowduckquack• 13 years ago

Include a flyer with a logo in the image and include the printed flyer in every delivery.

jonknee4• 13 years ago

Google Shopping that is, not Google. Google Shopping is the paid eCommerce inclusion service. If you break the rules in AdWords you'll also be kicked out.

This is a sensible rule too--if everyone had watermarks the pages would be hideous.

maratd3• 13 years ago

This is a sensible rule too--if everyone had watermarks the pages would be hideous.

So as a merchant, I have to invest a ton of money into getting quality photography of my products ... only to have my competitors use those same images for free?

samworm• 13 years ago

"I have to invest a ton of money" did you miss the bit where this is an optional service? A service which you (and your competitors) should only use if you consider the value offered to outweigh the cost?

awestroke• 13 years ago

If your competitors wanted to use your images, they'd just remove the watermarks and use them anyway. Also, who cares if your competitors use them? Aim for better service.

mikeash6• 13 years ago

In other words, you'll only sell through venues which allow you to use DRM? That's your right, of course, but I don't know that you'll get much sympathy.

jonknee4• 13 years ago

No one is forcing you to pay for ads on Google Shopping so you're free to do whatever, but why would you invest a ton of money into quality photography and then cover it up with a watermark?

If you're selling exactly what everyone else is selling the competitive point is customer service and price--I'd worry much more about that than someone copying your image. Such stores generally use the manufacturer's images anyways.

Cthulhu_• 13 years ago

Nope, you're covered by copyright laws there. You give Google an (implicit) license to use your photos, but not your competitors and you can send your lawyer after them.

GotNothing• 13 years ago

You're "investing a ton of money" into getting a high quality image, only to then turn around and slap a watermark on it, which more than likely has now downgraded the quality of the image.

To fully deter your competitors from using it, you have to place the watermark in the center of the image/over the product so that they can't easily crop it out.

Now from the potential customers perspective they want to look at those quality images you took and visualize having that product, however now they have to look past/around your watermark which kind of puts a downer in their customer experience.

TLDR: So you've spent tons of money on photos to slap a watermark on top of them and hinder customer experience?

TrevorJ9• 13 years ago

It is only recently a paid service. It started as part of the organic search results. The fact that it is now pay-to-place is shady because your average consumer still thinks what they see is organic when it is not.

lelf• 13 years ago

Did you accept their TOS?

adrow2• 13 years ago

I think the reasoning would be that by putting your URL in the image, you are potentially encouraging people to enter it manually instead of clicking Google Shopping's link to the product.

emilv• 13 years ago

No, most people would not do that. They would click the links on the page.

adrow2• 13 years ago

It doesn't have to be most people, with the traffic levels that Google probably deal with, even a small percentage doing that could add up to a lot of 'lost' click revenue.

ig1• 13 years ago

Seems perfectly reasonable, if you want to supply an image for a product via a shop feed it should reflect the product and not be an advertisement for the shop.

They don't seem to prohibit non-promotional (invisible) watermarks if the concern is image theft.

annnnd• 13 years ago

Why would invisible watermarks in any way deter the thieves?

Granted, you can catch them if that is your intention, but it more effort for less gain.

I don't understand the reason for this policy.

cma• 13 years ago

Thieves can already scrub out visible watermarks with content-aware fill etc.

chrisfarms• 13 years ago

Not sure why this gaining traction?. The rule seems fair, and someone broke the rule? Am I missing something.

protomyth3• 13 years ago

Because it looks like Google is using one merchant's carefully photographed image of a product for all the merchants selling that product. This seems a bit unfair.

daemin• 13 years ago

They should probably compensate the merchant who's photos they use with adwords or shopping credit for each photo that they use. Otherwise it seems too scummy.

jawns• 13 years ago

I was curious what size these images are being displayed within Google Shopping, so I checked it out. They're displayed at a standard thumbnail size during search and a larger size in the detail view. At thumbnail size, the watermark is barely noticeable. At the larger size, it's clearly there but isn't gaudy or anything.

I understand the merchant's motivation for putting it there -- they don't want their images stolen and reused without attribution (although I wouldn't imagine there are a ton of people out there trying to steal images of CPAP masks).

I don't really understand Google's motivation for banning such watermarks. So long as they're not the type of full-image watermarks that cover the entire product and make it difficult to tell what you're looking at, I don't think they significantly degrade the user experience.

I guess what I'm saying is: Not all watermarks are created equal. The kind that make for a bad user experience should rightfully be banned ... but this is just a tiny credit line in the bottom right corner and isn't really covering up the image.

philbarr• 13 years ago

Probably it's easier to just ban all watermarks than police the use of watermarks.

GilbertErik• 13 years ago

Exactly. What's the difference between the cpap.com watermark and this sort of watermarking which is designed to prevent reuse. https://cdn0.iconfinder.com/data/icons/ballicons/128/magnifi...

lazyjones• 13 years ago

I don't really understand Google's motivation for banning such watermarks.

They want to use the images for other purposes. Shopping merchants are just there to create content for Google's various venues.

RexRollman• 13 years ago

Winner.

xiphias• 13 years ago

I was working on Google Shopping. Lots of images are checked by a combination of machine learning and humans (still, errors happen, as it's lots of data to deal with).

The main problem with the watermarking is that the images can be shown in product listings where an image like this wouldn't look nice and also the image can be used for a product that is sold by multiple merchants.

msy• 13 years ago

So in short Google wants to use merchant's product images, which they've worked to produce or paid for as generic product images without compensation and if merchants don't like it their account is banned.

icebraining3• 13 years ago

Google wants to use them according to the agreement that the merchant signed.

raldi2• 13 years ago

without compensation

Clearly the merchant must be getting something out of the arrangement, or else they wouldn't be concerned about Google walking away from it.

kyle6884• 13 years ago

This. Search for a product in google shopping and multiple merchants will be clustered around one product image that is chosen from 1 of the merchants. That's the main reason, but it also avoids the ugliness of an ebay search where seemingly every other merchant has bright/bold text claiming free gifts or other such offers.

TrevorJ9• 13 years ago

the image can be used for a product that is sold by multiple merchants.

This is the issue. There's no incentive for me to invest a huge amount of capital to create good product images if I'm forced to basically give them away to my competitors.

The end result for Google shopping will be lower image quality because you've created a disincentive for us to create better looking images.

j2kun2• 13 years ago

Why not Fourier watermarks?

dudus• 13 years ago

If you take a screenshot of an image with a Fourier Watermark does it retain the watermark?

If it does it's a better solution than using a metadata watermark.

j2kun2• 13 years ago

That's an excellent question! Something I should explore on my blog... :)

gnu8• 13 years ago

The real reason may be that Google wants to use the images itself. It sure would make things easy if they could force their merchants to provide definitive and reusable images for all products ever, particularly to compete with Amazon.

raldi2• 13 years ago

Could someone paste the image links below? Pastebin appears to be overriding my phone's ability to select and copy text.

mbrutsch• 13 years ago

http://www.cpap.com/productpage/disposable-white-filters-res...

http://www.cpap.com/productpage/probasics-zzz-mask-sg-full-f...

lnanek2• 13 years ago

I would prefer my images not have watermarks, but I'd also prefer the best images. This seems counter to that goal. I know some merchants like Newegg invest money into having their own photos done and it is very valuable for making it clear what connector components have and the like, but this makes it not quite so valuable to them since others could pretty easily reuse the images without being caught and without quality loss of watermark removal.

protomyth3• 13 years ago

If I understand this correctly, I type something like "hard drive" and then see a box to the right with a "Shop for hard drive on Google". The box has pictures and prices. Clicking on that link brings up rows of products. Each row has a picture, product name, and text saying something like "$59.99 from 25+ stores".

It looks to me like Google is going to use one of the merchants images of the products to summarize those 25+ stores in a row. If the image Google picks is watermarked then it is bad for Google.

So, instead of Google getting an image of each product themselves, they get the merchant to provide them with a generic image to sell everyone's products. I guess if you use Google's service, you should provide them with the generic image they want and save the good image with measurements and such for your website.

This seems to be another algorithmic solution for Google.

judk• 13 years ago

Sounds like Google rebuilding yet another pillar of their business on a foundation of copyright violation.

malandrew• 13 years ago

Not really. You give them a license to use your image by using their service. That's not a violation if you voluntarily license the image to them per the terms of service. If you're not happy with this, go elsewhere with your images and your products.

millzlane2• 13 years ago

Let let me explain why one might watermark their photos. I sell aftermarket car parts for JDM vehicles. Most of these products don't have images from the manufacturer. Why? Well there lots of reasons but it boils down to different configurations. It would be too time consuming to take an image of every product in every configuration for every model they sell. So they may have a generic picture of an exhaust system, that may or may not be the product you're paying for.

I know that consumers like to see what they buy. I want to have pictures of every image I sell. To do that, I need to order 1 of everything I plan to sell so I can take photos of each item. As you can see it gets pretty costly. I'm spending time, money and effort, to give the best possible shopping experience. All while letting the customer know I have a product in my hands that my competitors don't.

My competitors on the other hand. They just signed up for a new drop shipping account with the same distributor but guess what? They have no images of the items they sell and have no capital to order the item in. So where do they get those images? You guessed it, from everyone else.

When I first started I remember giving discounts to customers who would allow me to open their package and take showcase photos before sending them. I would be upset if someone used my photos without my permission. I don't have time or money to police the internet. So I protect my investment through the use of the water mark. If not, it'd be like Ebay where you see 40 different sellers using the same exact product image, atrocious.

RokStdy• 13 years ago

Thanks for the interesting perspective. This doesn't help you since you already have a catalog of photos, but I wonder if you might get around this rule if you took pictures of <part> on a backdrop with your logo repeated. That way, sure, I could try to crop it to get rid of your logo, but if it's an irregular shape I'd have to Photoshop your stuff out. Or maybe a sticker with your logo on an unimportant part of the product.

Pxtl3• 13 years ago

That does restrain them a bit though - with a watermark, they can batch-change the nature or obtrusiveness of the watermark, they can resell the unmarked images, they can update their logo freely.

None of that can be done with the real-world-logo appearing on the product.

millzlane2• 13 years ago

That's a good idea. Instead of watermarking the images, silkscreen our logo on the backdrop. I wonder if that qualifies as "promotional text".

mark-r3• 13 years ago

Reading the original post, this would run afoul of the rules too.

Pxtl3• 13 years ago

Funny how we destroy file-formats and screw up the very HTML standard itself and muck up YouTube all to protect video and audio content, but nobody gives a crap about images and we're left with a Wild West. Look how many above-board publicly-run sites are based on the trading of copyrighted image content. Ask a webcomic author what they think of Funnyjunk and the like.

I don't know what the right solution is, but it seems absurd that one form of copyrighted content lives completely without protection because that's the content that's created by small businesses instead of global megacoporations.

That said, Google probably could at least protect your image content from being filched by other users within the Google platform if you could "register" your image with them as the original - they have image-matching algorithms to enforce that.

ivanca2• 13 years ago

That's already the case; they see who posted the image first and it scores "SEO points" for that.

prodigal_erik• 13 years ago

Could you send the FTC after competing "merchants" who are advertising products they not only don't have in stock but have literally never seen? It sounds like a scam, and I wouldn't knowingly give money to an outfit like that.

msbarnett• 13 years ago

Could you send the FTC after competing "merchants" who are advertising products they not only don't have in stock but have literally never seen? It sounds like a scam, and I wouldn't knowingly give money to an outfit like that.

I hate to break it to you, but a HUGE amount of e-commerce sites are nothing more than front-ends to drop-shipping accounts with suppliers. This is the dominant pattern in the industry. Actually holding your own inventory is a rarity that would put you at a major competitive disadvantage.

Unless you're dealing with a very large, well-capitalized site, or a company that makes their own product, you're almost certainly dealing with this kind of store.

jborden133• 13 years ago

The inverse holds true here as well. Manufacturers are constantly battling with unauthorized & shady retailers to maintain the integrity of the images - as well as with the 2 major platforms that own eCommerce and online product advertising. This is seriously some anti-competitive action, on the whole. See the Amazon model where they monitor the products and retailers on the platform, identify the best sellers and then set their systems to always be the cheapest and always win on integrated services. Eventually no one can compete and only AMZN shareholders will win in the long run.

wahsd• 13 years ago

Just curious are you watermarking to specifically deter unauthorized use of the image?

I ask because I could see how you could use steganography to hide copyright information or simply add the watermark in such a manner that you would only be able to detect/reveal it by a specific method of color alterations. That way you would still have a case if you needed to take legal action.

edit: I just realized that will probably never be answered so does anyone else feel like giving some perspective?

joshuaheard• 13 years ago

Photographs have a copyright automatically attached to them when created. You could use a copyright enforcement action against your competitors. Look at the DMCA.

velco• 13 years ago

Just create a practically invisible watermark of your photos by, for example, subtly altering only one of the RGB channels

http://www.psdbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/4-blue-chan...

webdude• 13 years ago

We got hit with the same issue just a month ago, and were actually completely kicked out of the Shopping Feeds. We were finally able to talk to the right person at Google and get reactivated for a two week extension to give us a little more time to become compliant...at which point we then just removed all but the newly unwatermarked images from the feed and for the past 4 weeks have been doing nothing but recreating non-watermarked images for all of our products and slowly building up our feed again.

I understand all the arguments...but when you're a company who IS trying to protect hard work in shooting great high def images in-house, it is very personal.

adamsrog• 13 years ago

Google Shopping: Obey the TOS You Accepted or Be Banned

Seems reasonable.

GrowMap• 13 years ago

Everything Google does benefits big brands. This hurts small business and that has obviously been their goal since their CEO said the Internet is a "cesspool" and favoring big brands is how we're going to clean it up.

Google has a virtual monopoly on paid and organic search. Nothing converts as well as search. They are severely damaging small businesses right and left. It takes dozens of other sources of customers to replace Google.

Allowing Google to take over the Internet as we know it and turn it into their own personal business is dangerous and unethical. That is why since commerce began we have been warned about the dangers of monopolies. They became a monopoly through the media - both owned by the wealthy elite. The media chooses the winners from the products they built in the first place.

If you use Google Shopping to display your products I encourage you to log out of Google and go see what they actually display. You are likely to find that your products never show up for the money keyword phrases even when you specify you only want to see the products in your store. But search on something general and you'll confirm all your products are in their feed. That is an even larger issue than watermarks. Both are symptoms of Google being far too powerful. I first wrote about that in http://growmap.com/farmer-update-google-competitors/

Each major "Borg" site first hands small business a way to make money more easily and then starts taking it away. That is how AdWords worked, and now organic, Google Shopping, Facebook, etc. Expect it with Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat - any entity that is "Borg".

Users handed Google all this power and they can take it away, but first businesses and bloggers must offer them alternatives and make it clear why we need to use something else.

I know that sounds unlikely, but the tide does eventually turn. Wal-mart killed small towns across America - but they are making a comeback now that people realize what it cost them to be obsessed with cheap. We can do the same online, but it won't happen overnight.

simoncion5• 13 years ago

since their CEO said the Internet is a "cesspool" and favoring big brands is how we're going to clean it up.

When did he say this? Can you provide a citation?

cypher5432• 13 years ago

http://www.wired.com/business/2008/10/google-ceo-call/

mark-r3• 13 years ago

Would it be possible to have two images, a thumbnail submitted to Google and a full-size one with watermark to display on your web site?

johnnyg5• 13 years ago

We looked at that, but the thumbnail would not be used as google displays both thumbnail and full sized (on mouse over) versions.

Google Shopping: Upload Your Content Without Watermarks or Be Banned

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