Back in early December, Google announced that the company would be adding 5,000 new stock images of “nature, weather, animals, sports, food, education, technology, music and 8 other categories” for free use in Docs, Sheets and Slides.

At the time nobody knew how Google got these images, who took them, or what kind of license they came with. The mystery continued on unsolved until a week ago when an iStocker discovered one of his own images in the search results. As it turns out, the use of these photos is the result of a little known licensing deal between Google and Getty Images. Read more…