[1] 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.

[10] In May 2011, Google introduced a sort by subject feature for a visual category scheme overview of a search query.

[15][16][17] The only alternative option was to turn on an even stricter filter which would refuse to search for the aforementioned terms whatsoever.

[18] On February 15, 2018, the interface was modified to meet the terms of a settlement and licensing partnership with Getty Images.

This change is intended to discourage users from directly viewing the full-sized image (although doing so using a browser's context menu on the embedded thumbnail is not frustrated), and encourage them to view the image in its appropriate context (which may also include attribution and copyright information) on its respective web page.

Most recently (October 2022), it was shown that 93.1% images of 390 anatomical structures were relevant to the search term.

Unlike traditional image retrieval, this feature removes the need to type in keywords and terms into the Google search box.