Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace dress led to the creation of Google Images (independent.co.uk).
“Lopez caused a stir back in 2000 when she attended the Grammy awards alongside then-partner Puff Daddy in the green sheer printed dress with a belly button baring neckline designed by Versace.”
That green dress she wore, and all it neglected to cover no doubt. Said Google chairmen Eric Schmidt:
“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: J-Lo wearing that dress. Google Image Search was born.”
And it—Google Images that is—has often been a bone of contention for image hosting webmaster and mistresses and a source of LQ image fools gold for users ever since.
Schmidt may like to point to it being developed as the most efficient means of getting what was wanted to the green dress and other image crazed masses but many sites hosting images suggest that it—and its other image searching kin— hijacks their pictorial content in a way that text search did not.
Good or bad? Inevitable perhaps. Are there better? For sure, Google may have got the image search ball rolling but MSN’s Bing (which also poweres Yahoo) has seemingly surpassed Google’s search result quality in images at least: Bing on with images (Pick of the Week 24th Sept. 2013).
Updated 21st September 2019
Jennifer Lopez revives dress behind the invention of Google Images (bbc.co.uk).
Friday’s show, at Milan Fashion Week, paid homage to both the original dress, and to Lopez.
With the show’s final few models walking the catwalk to Lopez’s 2001 hit “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” before a montage of Google Image searches for the original Grammy’s dress was projected on to the walls before a voice announced: “OK, Google. Now show me the real dress.” With the now 50-year-old singer and actress (Latest Picks 24th Jul. 2019) then walking out in a modern take on the dress to cheers from the crowd.
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