To be fair, the search space was much smaller before Google. Also, I kept using Altavista for quite a while before finally switching over to Google as my defaul

To be fair, the search space was much smaller before Google. Also, I kept using Altavista for quite a while before finally switching over to Google as my default search, changing only because google is infinitely better on technical searches. Now, I use Ask for non-technical searches and google for technical ones -- I'm really starting to like ask, but it doesn't prioritize technical searches like Google.