In the past Gmail has hidden images in email messages by default. If a user wanted to see images contained within a message, they had to click "display images below" to get them to show up.

This policy is still in place for messages from unknown recipients, but now images will automatically be displayed if they come from a contact. More specifically, if you have emailed a person at least twice, you will see images from them without having to click the "display images below" link.

Google is now showing images in universal search results for location queries. They have shown maps for some time, but the addition of images enriches the results that much more.

Google has been working on a couple of new features for Google Image Search. The first one is the addition of suggestions for Google Image Search, which is basically just Google Suggest for the image search engine.

The Pink Tentacle blog writes (update: currently getting a quota exceeded message there):

Google added an option to their photo gallery app Picasa Web Albums offering you to lock albums. The option is named “Sign-in required to view,” meaning only people you share the album with are meant to access it, after signing in with their Google account.

The Google Operating System blog reports that Google is likely changing the name of their Picasa photo sharing service to “Google Photos”.

A few other features are due to rollout as well, including licensing options, email photo uploads, and tagging of people in pics.

People don’t have an expectation of privacy on a public street, but few expect a walk through the seedier side of town to become a snapshot with a potentially global focus, either.

Google is shutting down Hello, Picasa’s photo sharing service which was part of the Picasa acquisition back in 2004. On the program, Wikipedia writes:

Research presented by Google suggests they are on track to improving image search to a level of relevancy on par with their core web search service.

Some site publishers in the Middle East believe Google struck a controversial picture of Egyptian striker Mohammed Aboutrika from its index, but Matt Cutts said that never happened.

At the end of January, Egyptian midfielder Mohamed Aboutrika was the talk of the soccer world. Scoring the winning goal to defeat Sudan’s team, Aboutrika raised his shirt to reveal a message of Palestinian sympathy.

It read: Sympathize with Gaza.

Images on Google Earth are highly detailed but do not show imagery in real-time.

Many people according to Frank Taylor at his Google Earth Blog believe the images are in real time. He believes that is because of weather satellite photos that are a few hours old or because of live weather radar. He goes into detail how Google collects its images for Google Earth.