1) Google was the only search engine at that time that understood the power of search. Yahoo pushed its search box below the fold. Lycos, AV tried to bring more "content" to the search page.
2) It was blazingly fast.
3) It allowed you to test your current search with the competition search engines. After a few times you did that, you realized they were by far the best, and did not try it anymore.
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In the time of dial-up, having a fast-loading search page probably accelerated the transition. Users factor in speed of load into their preference, even though they are not aware of it. Old school search engine home pages were criminally crowded. Google provided frictionless experience.