Comment by Keyframe

i hate to be that guy, but.. before google was around, it was the first wave of commercial internet - for all of what five years? Online search was a thing, in-fact it was THE thing across many vendors and all relied on advertising revenue. Revenue on the internet which was ramping up still for dotcom era in those few years. Google's ad revenue vs 98 global ad spend revenue - is that inflation adjusted? Global markets development since then, internet economy expansion, even sheer number of people alive.. completely different worlds.

What might stand from comparison is google introduced a good product people wanted to use and innovative approach to marketing at the time which was unobtrusive. Product drive the traffic. It was quite a bit before Google figured it all out though.