I can remember when all the geeks used a search engine called Altavista. It is probably still around, but I haven’t been there to check lately. The interface was always a little complicated though, and the less-savvy user probably gravitated to Yahoo. Of course, this was the age when one probably needed to check several search engines before finding what you wanted.
There were probably two reasons for this. The first was that the internet was that much smaller. Content hadn’t been replicated in the numerous places it has now, and searching was probably a more difficult task. Secondly, Google had not yet revolutionised the way search engines organised results.
Today, there must be few who are unfamiliar with Google, and few who do not use it on a regular basis. As the internet historians come to weave their stories, however, they tend to focus on the ways in which Yahoo might have come close to achieving Google’s dominant position.