Google crawls and indexes millions if not billions of websites. And within each of them, the images are also indexed so they can be shown on Google Images.
Because all of the images Google show in its search engine results pages are made public, it should be noted that the creators of the images may not want people to use them as they wish.
In other words, the owners may want to license their images.
This is why back in February 2020, Google introduced Image License in Google Images.
This way, the owners of the images can specify license information for their images on their website, and a Licensable badge will then be shown alongside the images' thumbnails in Google Images.
Image owners can do this either using Schema.org or the IPTC metadata formats.
According to Google in its announcement:
Google began testing the badge feature after working with the Center of the Picture Industry (CEPIC) and other news and image associations, to find ways to increase awareness of image licensing, and to help image owners sell and get credit for their work.
"For results where the publisher or image creator provided licensing information, we will display a ‘licensable’ badge over the image,” Google said, "When you select a badged image to view, we will show a link to the license details of the image, and if provided by the publisher, you’ll also find a link to where you can purchase or license the image."
And this time, the Licensable badge feature in Google Images is out of beta.
"You can also filter results to only return those images that include licensing information,” added Google.
Here, users can select 'Creative Commons licenses' or 'Commercial & other licenses' from the Usage Rights dropdown menu in Google Images search.
With the 'Usage rights' search filter, Google simply allows users to search for images with Creative Common or other licenses, in order to address concerns about digital images being commercialized and used for free.
For users who conduct searches on Google, the images that have been licensed will have links to the license details, and/or to the terms page provided by the content owner or the licensor. This can be seen on the Google Images previews of the said images.
Using the links, the owners/creators of the images can also direct users to a web page where people can acquire or purchase the image from them.
Through this structured data-powered feature, image owners and creators can easily license their files by using the tag, and help communicate the licensing details to Google users.
This in turn should reduce accidental image theft and increase revenues for the owners.