There was a beautiful period before Google was reverse bought by DoubleClick where you could find damn near anything. Searching was a solved problem by Inktomi and AltaVista but PageRank solved sorting search results (for a while).
Before Google AltaVista's search was pretty good at filtering out the meta tag spam that bubbled up in other search engines.
> beautiful period before Google was reverse bought by DoubleClick
That's a beautiful way to put it. I remember those days and thing is, much of Google's reputation was built during those days, a coattail they're still coasting on today.
In those days I remember you could find anything at all in just a moment. "Information snacking" was a thing, versus "being given the answer we think you want (or the one that will make us the most money)".
"Reverse bought by DoubleClick", will have to remember that..
Before Google AltaVista's search was pretty good at filtering out the meta tag spam that bubbled up in other search engines.