not us yahoo / Altavista / or whatever else was around at the time users. Google was so clearly better right out of the gate that I distinctly remember having conversations conveying the shock and awe at the quality of the results. Before Google everything was mediocre at best.

I’d say the for the bulk of Google’s visitors the results aren’t merely good enough, they’re insanely great.

Now, that said, the G monopoly is horrible and needs to die.

I had the opposite reaction...Google search was so 'generic' compared to how you could do laser focused searches with altavista...

What pushed Google over the top for me was the sheer size of their index...