[alan-stark]

While John talks about the period before Google, this quote brings up a remarkable déjà-vu:

[~14:30] Although the search companies were having great success, they were turning into something quite different than what they started out to be. They lost the sight of what brought users to them in the first place: The need to find things. The search engine companies stopped caring about search.

When it came to actually locating relevant information on the web, Yahoo, Excite, and the rest of the so called search companies, frankly, stunk. You could spend all day typing various combinations of keywords that you were looking for. Most of the results were links to sites trying to sell you something you didn't want. The world was hungry for a radically better way of searching the web.