Singer/actress JENNIFER LOPEZ was responsible for the birth of Google Images following her appearance at the 2000 Grammy Awards.
The Love Don’t Cost A Thing hitmaker’s iconic red carpet appearance wearing a green, tropical print Versace gown led to Internet users being desperate to view images of the star in the dress.
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, revealed that the search engine’s founders were inspired to create a function to locate photographs online due to the high demand for images of Lopez.
In an article for Project Syndicate, he writes, “Our co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin – like all other successful inventors – kept iterating. They started with images. After all, people wanted more than just text. This first became apparent after the 2000 Grammy Awards, where Jennifer Lopez wore a green dress that, well, caught the world’s attention. At the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen. But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted: JLo wearing that dress. Google Image Search was born.”
Google Images was introduced in 2001. (CMR/WNWCVG/ZN)