This is my recollection as well. Google was amazing because the results were so astonishingly better than anything else before it. As for ads, I don't recall G

This is my recollection as well. Google was amazing because the results were so astonishingly better than anything else before it. As for ads, I don't recall Google even having ads at all to begin with. And when they did start including advertising, everyone was already getting annoyed with web ads, and Google had somehow found a way to do ads "right." (Unrelated: I would just like to say that the subheading "Portal Combat" is worth the salary of whoever wrote it.)