I'm a human and I'm really going to lose business over this policy.
In business a photo can often make the difference between a sale or no sale, or more important, which shop the sale goes to. Some businesses, like fashion, are almost entirely "photo" based. Others, like food, cars, etc. rely on it extensively.
Here's an example in which, for arguments sake, we state that all non-photo factors are equal and the best they can be.
Your business spends $100,000 a year to have top quality photos taken for the products you sell and you find the photos lead to a five to ten fold improvement in sales vs. stock or no photos. Now say all your competitors just steal your images and use them for their sites. Your sales drop back to where they were and your advantage is gone. And now you've got to make up the $100,000 to top it all off.
Having a watermark won't stop lesser competitors from sealing your image, but other "on par" competitors will likely not due to potential litigation. If you don't have a watermark everyone steals it with the line, "I didn't know it was something I couldn't use ... my web guys just found it on the internet. I'll talk with them." (or whatever) So now you have to constantly police the internet for competitors using your images, deal with take-downs, and lawyers.
Hope I've cleared things up a bit.
It's a pretty easy equation--do you make enough money through Google Shopping that it makes up for any potential losses from others stealing your image (which you can of course still go after legally)?
Not happy with NSA collecting dragnet surveillance on you? It's a pretty easy equation. Renounce your citizenship.
Neighbor making too much noise at night? It's a pretty easy equation. Move out (or kill them?)
Why can't someone that's party to a relationship make a complaint about an aspect of that relationship?
In other words, a cry for Google to change the policy to minimize the problem rather than just abandoning Google Shopping.
The answer isn't to stop using Google Shopping, and the answer isn't to 'put up or shut up'. I would hope that someone at Google Shopping might be able to figure out a resolution with OP that is the best for everyone involved - i.e. doesn't break google's TOS, and doesn't leave OP paying to produce high-quality photos that his competition will steal.
If we publish our home brewed content without watermarks and it is lifted off google and used to compete against us, we have no effective recourse.
Detail:
In our company, one advancement track is from Customer Service to Products. It seems like a good and obvious thing to do, but typically photos and product materials in our space are produced by teams without direct experience helping customers make CPAP equipment work for them. We often find that the stock images and materials available to us are ineffective for internet customers, as they are often designed to target physicians and the owners of traditional brick and mortar CPAP retailers.
We have spent a lot of time and effort to do better. I believe we have. Our product presentations are end CPAP user driven and focused. We view both the images produced and the knowledge that produced them as an earned competitive advantage.
We've had instances where we woke up to find anothercpapco.com copying our product catalog verbatim. I think software patents slow innovation and that the DRM situation in the music industry is bad. Yet, I made the decision to water mark our images in order to prove them stolen.
Sure you do. Compete back. Preferably on price and quality of your product rather than the prettiness of your pictures.
Anyone can take a picture of a CPAP machine. Yours aren't special, and if that's what's harming your business, you're doing something wrong. Probably a lot of things.
Anyone can take a picture of a CPAP machine but not every can do so after 5 years experience serving customers using them. What angles do they want to see, what zoom shots make things most clear, how do those zooms relate to the specific features and usage of that machine/mask/product.
CPAP is unfamiliar and visuals are the guide. It is important to do it right and hard to do it right. I think they are special as are the people who made them.
Decent photography has a real-world cost attached to it. Why should the fact that anyone else can do it be a reason I give it away for free, with no attribution?
Presumably there was a cost to figuring out the angles and zooms that showed these machines in the most informative way. Do you think that particular, informed camera setup should be patented?
If not, why should the particular photographs be copyrighted or otherwise excluded from use? Presumably when setting up your business (or the OP's), they looked to other more successful businesses as an example to follow. Should those other businesses be compensated for contributing to the OP's success?
What makes one idea, or expression of an idea, exclusive, private property, while other, often more valuable ideas, are free for the taking?
Sounds to me like the OP is trying to suppress competition through rent seeking, rather than competing on an even playing field by providing more value to the customer.