You'll have to excuse my ignorance on this one but it will be an easy question to answer.

Where does Google reference it's images on the Google Images search.

Do you submit the images or do they reference them from your site somehow.

I don't know how this works?

They reference them from your site. No submission is required.

This is one of those linguistic trick questions? What means "reference?"

Google Images is an extension of Google - they crawl the web, request pages, and chew on the html. It's full of title and h1 tags, paragraphs, and the rest of what we know as "on-page-SEO," but they also chew on the img tags in your html. And depending on whatever factors they set up, they index some of these images. ( I'm guessing bigger than 100x100, with an alt tag, and a few other criteria like that. )

But Google downloads the images, and then serves them up from their servers. So when you come up in a Google Image search, a hit on your jpeg won't show up in your logs after the fact. When you ask "Where does Google reference it's images on the Google Images search" the answer might be Google? The particular images that turn up in a search come from big G's server farms, but point back to your page as their origin, encouraging searchers to view them in context.

This is one of the reasons Google is constantly under fire for copyright.

alt attribute if you please John

Dang, you got me there. Three days in the relevant link exchange?

So whatever happened to the concept of a photographer having the rights to their own images if as soon as you make anything available publicly a Google spider/robot whatever.. can come along and make it available on their site.
If any of us stole Google's content without their consent there would be hell to pay.

So does Google own the internet now?

Not that I really care this is a intellectual exercise.

As a photographer, I can identify with your sentiment, but you're making a logic error. Google isn't "stealing" your images. In fact, they're promoting them; Google Images is the #2 search engine sending me traffic. It really works out to our mutual benefit, so I'm not going to complain to a lawyer, in fact, I'm going to recode my site to make the images more accessible to Google.

Normally, when a photographer sues for unlicensed commercial use ( and let there be no question Google is a commercial entity; the only reason their search exists is ad revenue ) it's because when some real estate developer prints your scenic in their catalogue, it's implying to their readers that you recommend their product. Nobody is going to mistake the fact that you come up in a search for an endorsement on your part of Google's enterprise. There's still the copyright issue, but we'll get to that; in the meantime, this kind of limits a person's reason to sue, and any hope of colossal punitive damages. I'm not a lawyer, so this next part is just a guess, but I'm thinking this is a lot like how the courts ruled in National Enquirer's favor in some celebrity suit, where they said the person had a baby by Sasquach, and the court held that no reasonable person would believe this, so there are no damages.

Which brings us back to copyright, a topic that's not at all understood by photographers. You own the the copyright the instant your shutter slams shut, unless you're on the clock and have an agreement with your employer. You do not have to file with the patent office, Library of Congress, or anyone else for your copyright to be in effect. Beyond this point, though, it's not clear, at least to me; a lot of photogs will tell you if you don't file your copyright you either can't get compensatory damages, or they're very limited. I don't think that's true, but I don't know for sure, and I've heard it several times. I've also heard that you can only sue for actual damages in most cases, and if you're not selling your work, it being published somewhere else doesn't cause you any actual damage, or devalue it. Again, I'm sure there's a grain of truth here, but how much is anyone's guess.

Obviously, this confusion works out in Google's favor; how many people are going to pay a lawyer to get them into a game they don't know the rules of? ( And really you want a first-amendment attorney, not a general one. )

The Author's Guild raised hell over Google Book Search, and there's a way to opt-out of that. Probably the same with Google Images. Or, you can write your code in a way they probably won't understand, like instead of using img tags, use spans with background images. I'm doing something very much like this, and need to fix it so they have an easier time with my images.

So, I'm with you when it comes to copyright, but willing to make a blanket exception in Google's case because they give me free advertising. It's more like symbiosis than stealing.

Yeah ForrestCroce,

I agree with your comments on the advertising aspect of it and it's true that there is a bit of give and take. I guess if I was given the choice of whether or not I want my photos on Google Images I'd probably say yes.
Saying that I wouldn't want anything included that I thought was a salable product.
It will be interesting to see what happens now that Vericom are suing YouTube and the ramifications of any precedents set if by some miracle that it gets to court.
I think too many companies have too much to lose to let that case get to court.
As I understand Australian copyright law if someone lifted a photo from Google used it for a commercial purpose I would have recourse to claim damages from Google and the person who stole the photo.
Of course this will never be tested - I wouldn't think.
But I guess most countries would have slightly differing laws.

I 2nd that!!!!

You second what?

My god, that was an in-depth explanation.