The way I remember it is that I used at least Lycos and AltaVista before Google. In both cases, a major reason for switching was that the search itself got clut

The way I remember it is that I used at least Lycos and AltaVista before Google. In both cases, a major reason for switching was that the search itself got cluttered up with ads. So Google's current trajectory does not bode well for them, as far as I'm concerned.