Google lost to Perfect 10

Old news by now ,Google lost to Perfect 10 because Google made thumbnails of the images and stored them in their database, which were displayed along with their ads.  This pretty much negated their fair use argument.  They are now open to future litigation by other sites for copyright infringement.  I'm guessing that unless Google wants to keep paying court costs, there is going to be a change in their image search functionality.

Google prides themselves on their algorithms for ranking and placement. As web developers, we crave higher rankings and there are hundreds of sites dedicated to SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

I think there is a solution that solves both needs.  Have a registry option on Google where you obtain a key for your URL.  Place that key in the robots text file and when Google spiders your site, if it detects the key in the robots text file, it indexes your images  in the image search section.  To get this key, you would have to agree to all of Google's terms, stating that you own/use/or extend the rights of the copyrighted images on your site and that you agree to the use of Google stored thumbnails for use on the search pages along with Google's ad program.

I'm guessing that a lot of web developers may not see any reason to have their images indexed and wouldn't do this, so how does Google sweeten the pot? Tie it to the ranking on the text based side.  On any result set, if the sites robot.txt file indicates that the sites images should be indexed, then any text based search result set would list all such sites first as a primary order characteristic.

I think most sites would jump at the chance.  The agreement that Google would require could negate any future issues of copyright infringement by pointing the finger back at the original web site owner.