They also make money by chasing down people who use their images without paying a license (fair) by "extortion".
Once my co-founder used an image downloaded from Google (bad!) for the company website, GettyImages noticed that and threatened our company to legal actions (C&D) unless we pay the price of the license for the stock image, which magically became "premium" (or whatever their top tier is) for the occasion.
They're for sure right in making you pay in case you're illegitimately using their images without a license (totally fair IMHO), but the way they do it is very shady.
Once my co-founder used an image downloaded from Google (bad!) for the company website, GettyImages noticed that and threatened our company to legal actions (C&D) unless we pay the price of the license for the stock image, which magically became "premium" (or whatever their top tier is) for the occasion.
They're for sure right in making you pay in case you're illegitimately using their images without a license (totally fair IMHO), but the way they do it is very shady.