Even when Google arrived, it was not clearly better (at least for me) because it was hard to drill down a search by refining the specific search terms. But it was more adaptable to the first generation SEO methods.
Google became better for inexperienced users very quickly, but took a long time to become clearly better for those who could compose complex queries to find exactly what we wanted...
It was an interesting example of how power users can often become blind to major shifts because they've learned to work around the problems the newcomer solves.
