At the time, I was still aware that it was a much better search engine than anything Yahoo had.

What was the perceived worth of search engines as a general concept back then though? That's the relevant question, not which search was best.

It was immediately obvious that search engines were worthwhile - that's actually the origin of Yahoo's name - "Yahoo, I can finally find stuff on the www!" Before search engines started getting really good, we relied on stuff like web rings and other indexes of sites.

Were they making money though, just from the search side of things? Yahoo expanded into being a "media company" and portal as a way to generate revenue - search was just one way to get people in the door. Sorry, that's what I meant by worth (financial worth).