25 years ago: How Jennifer Lopez triggered Google search

It was February 23, 2000 when Jennifer Lopez (55) stepped in a green Versace dress over the red carpet of the Grammy Awards. What initially only caused murmur to the guests should change the Internet sustainably. The transparent chiffon dress with a tropical jungle print and an excerpt to the navel triggered a real flood of images-or rather: the desire for it.

At that time, the internet was still in its infancy, hardly anyone knew the Google search engine, which had only been online in 1998. But that should change suddenly, because the iconic fashion moment suddenly put Google with an immense challenge: everyone wanted to see Jennifer Lopez. “It was the most popular search query that we have ever seen until that day,” recalled the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt 2015. “But we hadn’t found a way to give people exactly what they wanted: a photo of J.Lo in this dress.”

Blue links instead of pictures – that was all that Google could offer back then. For the first time it became clear that text was not sufficient as a search result. “We knew that it was important, but we still had no one who could implement it,” said the former head of Google Images, Cathy Edwards, in 2019 to the “GQ”.

The solution only came a year and a half later: A freshly graduated student named Huican ZHU developed the completely new function of the Google image search together with Susan Wojcicki, the former YouTube boss. “The day after the Grammys, we started working on a new visual search function that focuses on pictures. In this respect, Jennifer Lopez played an important role in the launch of one of our most popular services,” confirmed a Google spokesman. Google Images finally went online on July 12, 2001.

At the time, Jennifer Lopez was of course not able to guess how much your appearance should change the Internet. The singer and actress decided spontaneously in 2000 – and against the advice of her stylists – between several clothes for the Versace dress, she revealed in 2020. 69) It had already presented it itself. But only the Grammy appearance catapulted the dress into the history books.

In the clip, Lopez describes the jungle dress as its “greatest fashion moment ever”. She only found out years later that “actually only because of that night and this dress Google Images was created”. In response to the video, Google jokingly appointed her Google Images as the “chief inspiration manager”.

Even today, the search for pictures by Jennifer Lopez in the green dress is still a popular Google request, Edwards continued. Google Images also made the fashion world more accessible to the general public. “Before that, fashion shows were only reserved for a very small group of people. The only distribution was in the fashion magazines, and they had to buy them,” said the entrepreneur.

In 2019, Donatella Versace then revived the iconic fashion moment at Milan Fashion Week again. On the screen, a Google search field with the command “Show me the Versace jungle dress” appeared at the show, followed by pictures of the Grammy appearance. When a computer voice called “the real Versace jungle dress”, Jennifer Lopez entered the catwalk in a new edition of the legendary robe-and again triggered a rush to the Google image search.