When google started search was a big business with a number of competitors. The most popular, Yahoo, was one of the biggest sites! There was even a meta-search

When google started search was a big business with a number of competitors. The most popular, Yahoo, was one of the biggest sites! There was even a meta-search engine (dogpile, I think?) that would run searches against several of the top contenders, but personally I mostly used AltaVista until google killed them. Google did have a key product insight that you didn't need the "web portal" cruft -- just good search was enough.