You know, I cant remember the actual point I switched to google from AltaVista, despite having convinced myself that I never would. Funny, no matter how entrenched we think we are, we are liableto change in a heartbeat. Bitcoin core could learn that lesson.
Altavista started going down that whole "portal" route (as were others). An object lesson in having to watch your step when it comes to monetizing things. I probably would have stuck with Altavista if they hadn't gone that way (though they would have had to have stepped up their search algorithm efforts too)
That is, I suspect, the main reason that google won. Their search algorithm was better, but not
that much better. The "portal" concept was shoving a lot of revenue-focused crap in your face that you didn't want or need every time you just wanted to do a search. There were also large differences in load time even on what passed for "high speed" connections at the time. Google was faster and easier.