Google Images

Google Images (previously Google Image Search) is a search engine owned by Google that allows users to search the World Wide Web for images. It was introduced on July 12, 2001, due to a demand for pictures of the green Versace dress of Jennifer Lopez worn in February 2000. In 2018, image search functionality was added.

When searching for an image, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed. When the user clicks on a thumbnail, the image is displayed in a larger size, and users may visit the webpage on which the image is used.

History

Beginnings and expansion (2001–2011)

In 2000, Google Search results were limited to simple pages of text with links. Google's developers worked on developing this further; they realized that an image search tool was required to answer "the most popular search query" they had seen to date: the green Versace dress of Jennifer Lopez worn in February 2000. Google paired a recently hired engineer Huican Zhu with product manager Susan Wojcicki (who would later become CEO of YouTube) to build the feature, and they launched Google Image Search in July 2001. That year, 250 million images were indexed in Image Search. This grew to 1 billion images by 2005 and over 10 billion images by 2010.

In January 2007, Google updated the interface for the image search, where information about an image, such as resolution and URL, was hidden until the user moved the mouse cursor over its thumbnail. This was discontinued after a few weeks.

On October 27, 2009, Google Images added a feature to its image search that can be used to find similar images.

On July 20, 2010, Google made another update to the interface of Google Images, which hid image details until mouseover.