Google Strips Photos from Authorship Results

Google is in the process of completely removing the eye catching authorship photos that you're used to seeing within the search results. Google's John Mueller announced the change like this:

We've been doing lots of work to clean up the visual design of our search results, in particular creating a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices. As a part of this, we're simplifying the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count. (Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one.)

We are skeptical that the click through rate is not reduced with this change, but are waiting for enough data to know for sure. Here's an example of what your listing will soon look like if they don't already.

Old

New

After John made the announcement on G+, he was met with a barrage of questions and comments by users. He did come back a few times to answer questions and made this statement.

This change only affects how authorship is shown in search (we continue to process & use authorship markup). 

This change was just to clear the clutter from mobile search results and should do nothing to deter you from continuing to add authorship markups to your content. The best way to do well in search going forward (with regard to authorship) is to set it up correctly and build up your author authority.