It was not GWT. I worked on it from 2004 (months before launch) to the first couple of years as a live service. It was Java servlets, generating HTML and JavaSc

It was not GWT. I worked on it from 2004 (months before launch) to the first couple of years as a live service. It was Java servlets, generating HTML and JavaScript, using some kind of templating system that was in place when I started, taking over from the previous front-end guy. There was no translating Java to Javascript, which is GWT's thing. In fact there was not that much Javascript involved in the early site, it was generated HTML with a smattering of JavaScript. The goal initially was to look like Google search as much as possible and capitalize on the users familiarity with that.