- Jennifer Lopez wore an old green dress at a Versace fashion show on Friday, one which sent the internet into meltdown when she first wore it at the Grammys in 2000.
- But that dress, and the subsequent explosion of internet searches for J-Lo, was actually the inspiration for Google Images.
- Here’s what happened.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
It was the year 2000 – seven years before anyone had even heard of Kim Kardashian or before Beyoncé walked red carpets nearly nude.
Up until this point, red carpets were fairly tame, fully-clothed affairs.
That is, until Jennifer Lopez arrived to the 2000 Grammys in that now infamous green Versace gown with a neckline that plunged down to her naval and was held together simply by fashion tape.
And before Kim Kardashian self-admittedly “broke the internet” with her bare-bottom photos, J.Lo’s dress really did.
Lopez wore the very same green dress at a Versace fashion show on Friday, sending the internet into meltdown once again, just 20 years later.
In an essay published in January on Project Syndicate, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, writes: "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."
As a result, Schmidt says, "Google Image Search was born."
Schmidt further explained how Google expanded from just text to images:
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.
E! News recently asked Lopez if she knew she inspired the photo-based search tool, to which she responded, "I heard that, who knew?!"
But Lopez has yet to receive any compensation for her contribution. "I'm a little bit upset about it," she joked. "I'm sure Versace's in on it as well."
When asked whether or not she wished she had gotten something from it, she teased, "Just a small part of it... a truck full of money."
Today, Google has thousands of options when looking for J.Lo's Grammys dress.
