The iconic Microsoft wallpaper image was taken in Sonoma County. Now it’s become a meme

The iconic Microsoft wallpaper of a green hill and blue sky dotted with clouds was photographed in Sonoma County back in the 1990s. It is widely regarded as the most viewed picture in the world, considering how many computers worldwide ran on Windows XP.

Entitled “Bliss,” the famous photo by former National Geographic photographer Charles O’Rear has inspired a new trend on social media.

Tourists and Sonoma County residents alike are going to the coordinates of where the original photo was taken and recreating it, some taking selfies in front of the hill.

One meme showing the original background photo alongside a recent photo of a man posing in front of the hill has been circulating the internet, even appearing on popular Instagram pages with millions of followers, such as @shitheadsteve. The April 10 post was liked more than 276,000 times.

The hill, now dubbed "Bliss" hill, is located off of Highway 121 south of Sonoma. The coordinates of where the original photo was taken are: 38° 15′ 0.5″ N, 122° 24′ 38.9″ W.

The famous spot is now covered with grapevines planted by Domaine Carneros.The Napa sparkling wine house currently sells a pinot sourced from the “Bliss” hillside.

O’Rear, who lived for years in St. Helena and now lives in North Carolina, took the picture in 1998. Microsoft bought the photo from O’Rear in 2000, and since then, it has graced computer screens across the world.

O'Rear was on his way to San Francisco to visit his girlfriend, now his wife, Daphne Larkin, when he happened upon the hillside, according to a 2014 Press Democrat story.

"There's nothing unique about it. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,“ he said in 2014.

It's impossible to quantify exactly how many people have seen the photo. But a figure of more than a billion is not an exaggeration, O'Rear said. "Windows XP was on 450 million computers and if only two people looked at each screen, that's nearly a billion there."

To read more about the history of the photograph, click here.