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Am I the last person to know why Google Images was invented?

At the Grammy's in 2000 - which is somehow 20 years ago already - Jennifer Lopez stunned the world in a rather revealing green dress (if you can call it a dress) by Versace.

This was 6 years after the 1994 Premier of Four Weddings and a Funeral (personal fave) where Liz Hurley made headlines in her safety pin Versace dress and the design house pulled it out of the bag again with J-Lo causing the world to search on Google for images of that green dress.

She wasn't the first one to wear the dress - it was previously modelled by a Versace model, worn by Donatella Versace in 1999, worn by Geri Halliwell who was currently still then known as Ginger Spice and presented in an orange version by Sandra Bullock. But it was Jennifer's appearance in it which took the world by storm.

 

So this is a nice bit of fashion history - but the part of the story that most interested me was that in 2015, Eric Schmidt spoke about how at the time of the dress's outing, people searching for it the next day saw the largest amount of searches Google had ever seen. They then realised search needed to move beyond words - and as keen innovators - Google Images was born!

Google Images is now an integral part of searching the Internet, and it's all a result of a particularly floaty, revealing green dress.

 

Lisa
by Lisa

Lisa has been planning, designing and building websites for companies of all sizes for over 18 years. Nowadays you'll mainly find her wireframing and then designing complex sites over at 18a to make sure they flow well to give the user the best possible experience whilst providing great ROI for the client. She also teaches SEO (search engine optimisation).

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