Google was inferior to AltaVista for quite some time.
According to Wikipedia: "In 2000, AltaVista was used by 17.7% of Internet users while Google was only used by 7% of Internet users, according to Media Metrix."
So, two years after official founding, Google was still not ahead to AltaVista.
AltaVista even had a "visual clustering" thing that used Java (which would work great now with Javascript) that would allow you to refine your searches. I still cry that we don't have the equivalent of that 25 years later.
Then AltaVista got caught in the great DEC "hostile giveaway". Which left Google sitting in the right place with nobody to really compete against them.
One problem was that AltaVista was early--it basically predated common people using the web--and so it wasn't quite so clear how you monetized it. DEC effectively ran it as a goodwill "free service" to the internet. Even in 1999, on-line commerce wasn't very big. Remember, the big AOL/Time-Warner merger was in 2000.
The one thing that Google got right was timing. Google was in the right place when everybody switched from services like AOL to basically just accessing the web directly. And this let them put ads in the search which could be used for monetization.
(Also, an aside it's possible for it to be totally true too)
Early Google users definitely trended towards power users, and if the average early Google user made 3x as many queries as the average Altavista user, Google would have higher actual query volume.
Google was inferior to AltaVista for quite some time.
According to Wikipedia: "In 2000, AltaVista was used by 17.7% of Internet users while Google was only used by 7% of Internet users, according to Media Metrix."
So, two years after official founding, Google was still not ahead to AltaVista.
AltaVista even had a "visual clustering" thing that used Java (which would work great now with Javascript) that would allow you to refine your searches. I still cry that we don't have the equivalent of that 25 years later.
Then AltaVista got caught in the great DEC "hostile giveaway". Which left Google sitting in the right place with nobody to really compete against them.
One problem was that AltaVista was early--it basically predated common people using the web--and so it wasn't quite so clear how you monetized it. DEC effectively ran it as a goodwill "free service" to the internet. Even in 1999, on-line commerce wasn't very big. Remember, the big AOL/Time-Warner merger was in 2000.
The one thing that Google got right was timing. Google was in the right place when everybody switched from services like AOL to basically just accessing the web directly. And this let them put ads in the search which could be used for monetization.