Google could find what I was looking for, it could understood context between terms, pages, it just seemed to hit the result bang on every time (compared to other searches where I would go 10 pages before refining search terms again or start playing with arcane operators).
The fact that it was an ultra-simplistic design with non-invasive (and sometimes actually functional) advertising was GREATLY appreciated, but not necessary.
The last search engine I used prior to Google was MetaCrawler, mostly because I could get aggregate results from different search engines and pick through that mess to try to find what I was looking for. (But also to snoop on peoples' search terms, which in 1999 were hilarious)