Google Images was created after heavy demand for photos of Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace dress.
Lopez wore the sheer, tropical-print dress at the 42nd Grammy Awards on February 23, 2000. Designed by Donatella Versace, the outfit became an instant red-carpet sensation, generating enormous public interest and repeated searches for photographs. Google executives later cited that demand as a major reason the company developed a dedicated image-search service.
At the time, Google’s ordinary results consisted mainly of text links. Users could search for the dress, but finding visual results was difficult because Google did not yet provide a specialised image index. Google Images launched in July 2001, giving users a way to search directly for pictures rather than only webpages describing them.
A common mix-up is to credit the dress itself with literally creating Google Images overnight. More precisely, the intense search interest exposed a limitation in text-based search and helped motivate Google’s image-search project. The dress is also called Versace’s “Jungle Dress” and had previously appeared on models and other celebrities.