For me at least, it wasn't that either. It was the quality of the results.

I would have put up with slow bloated adware Google results of early 2000s, compared to fast minimal sleek interface with results of Yahoo/Altavista/anything else I tried.

The results were good. I remember admitting that for many things I really could have used 'I'm Feeling Lucky' and bypass the SERP entirely, but I disliked relinquishing that much control, so I never made a habit of it. Today I don't think I could trust it much of the time.

Are you just re-emphasizing your point? I was trying to point out another differentiator that many people commented on at the time.

I'm not sure what you are unclear about, but yes I was re-emphasizing my point for you.

There were lots of "differentiators" that did not really matter, including speed. The differentiator was result quality, not how or when they were presented.

Yes. Altavista and Metacrawler worked really well. Google managed to be just a little bit leaner and faster still. They probably did start to have a bigger index at some point, though.