Ugh. I distinctly remember a dinner party in 1993-94 where we talked about how amazing the web was and how impossible it was to find anything. We discussed registered keywords a la AOL, and I’m sure someone suggested search engines would eventually solve it, but I certainly wouldn’t have wagered significant money on that based on Altavista.

When I discovered Google (I think it was running at beta.stanford.edu at the time) it was just short of a miracle.