this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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I could swear Google wasn't broadly a thing yet. The startup I worked at in 1999 had an elevator pitch for how we "could be the next Yahoo." Not a great thing to aspire to in retrospect, but Google wasn't on our radar.
They were there and they were superior to the alternatives almost out of the gate. I was working for a video game company at the time and me and the rest of the IT dept made the switch almost immediately because the results were clearly superior. Made me an advocate for them for years, probably far beyond where I should have given up. I am not sure which product cancellation finally changed my mind on them. Probably it was around the mess of Google Talk/Chat/Hangouts mess of apps.
You're right, they weren't a "household name" yet. But they were probably more than a little worried about surviving at the time. Turns out they picked the winning strategy.