3 ms·

Speed. Altavista, Dogpile, Metacrawler and the rest were slow, and Google felt instant.

• stinkbeetle 1y ago
  For me at least, it wasn't that either. It was the quality of the results. I would have put up with slow bloated adware Google results of early 2000s, compared to fast minimal sleek interface with results of Yahoo/Altavista/anything else I tried.
  • rpdillon 1y ago
    Are you just re-emphasizing your point? I was trying to point out another differentiator that many people commented on at the time.
    • stinkbeetle 1y ago
      I'm not sure what you are unclear about, but yes I was re-emphasizing my point for you. There were lots of "differentiators" that did not really matter, including speed. The differentiator was result quality, not how or when they were presented.
  • xp84 1y ago
    The results were good. I remember admitting that for many things I really could have used 'I'm Feeling Lucky' and bypass the SERP entirely, but I disliked relinquishing that much control, so I never made a habit of it. Today I don't think I could trust it much of the time.
• a96 1y ago
  Yes. Altavista and Metacrawler worked really well. Google managed to be just a little bit leaner and faster still. They probably did start to have a bigger index at some point, though.