Google was better if you were searching for something popular, because it showed highly linked-to pages for that query. AltaVisa was perfectly good if you were

Google was better if you were searching for something popular, because it showed highly linked-to pages for that query. AltaVisa was perfectly good if you were searching for something specific that would only have a few pages mentioning it. It was great for function names, error messages, names of professors, etc. So different people had different experiences.