In fairness, many of the pre-Google search engines _did_ focus too much on advertising, and auctioned off 1st place listings for various searches. Google succe

In fairness, many of the pre-Google search engines _did_ focus too much on advertising, and auctioned off 1st place listings for various searches. Google succeeded largely because they were unusually scrupulous about protecting the quality of their search results, and didn't make compromises that some advertisers wanted at the time.