Google Was the Fifth behind Yahoo: What Search History Teaches Us About Who Wins the AI Race

By Darrin Gerr, CEO of Agency Jet.

Reflecting on this, it’s clear that by learning from previous technological shifts, we can better anticipate where LLMs and AI platforms are heading. Just as search engines rapidly evolved from their humble beginnings in the 1990s, with pioneers like WebCrawler, Lycos, and AltaVista, followed by Yahoo’s brief dominance before Google ultimately reshaped the entire landscape, the adoption and influence of AI tools are likely to accelerate even faster.

The history of search engines proves that early leaders are not always the long-term winners. 

This naturally raises the question: will today’s front-runner in AI, such as ChatGPT, maintain its position as the leading AEO (Ask Engine Optimization) platform into the 2030s, or will the landscape shift again as innovations emerge? Understanding this progression is essential as we navigate the evolving relationship between SEO, AI, and the future of internet search.

Short version: To understand where we’re going, we need to understand where we started, from the early days of the 1990s to the present moment. This is a summary of the roadmap for all online searches.

And remember: Google wasn’t the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th to become the dominant player; they were the fifth. So, while ChatGPT currently holds an estimated 60% to 80% share of AEO (Ask Engine Optimization), will it still be number one in the 2030s?

In this summary, you’ll see how search engines of the past shaped the world we know today, and how internet search has evolved over the last 35+ years.

1990s: The early engines

WebCrawler
WebCrawler was the first search engine to allow users to search the full text of webpages, setting a new standard for how information could be discovered online. It paved the way for more advanced indexing and user-focused search experiences.

Lycos
Lycos expanded the scope of search by introducing one of the earliest large-scale, algorithm-driven indexes and offering a suite of integrated web services. It helped popularize the idea of the search engine as both a discovery tool and a web portal.

AltaVista
AltaVista revolutionized search with its powerful crawler and fast, comprehensive indexing, becoming one of the most advanced and reliable search engines of the mid-1990s. It demonstrated the value of speed, scale, and relevance long before Google emerged.

Yahoo (started in 1996, became the leader)
Yahoo dominated the late 1990s by combining human-curated directories with a fast-growing portal that blended search, news, email, and media, creating the first truly mainstream gateway to the internet. However, its reliance on a portal strategy over advanced search technology ultimately cost it the #1 position.

2000s: Search Engines start to be used by the masses

AOL is huge as an ISP/portal 

In the early 2000s, AOL started partnering with Google for search (paid listings deal in 2002), which accelerated Google’s reach. 

Google (2000s onward: becomes and remains the global king of search)
In the early 2000s, Google transformed search by perfecting PageRank, prioritizing relevance, speed, and simplicity at a level no competitor could match. As the decade progressed, Google expanded aggressively, launching products like AdWords, Maps, Gmail, and Chrome, cementing a unified ecosystem that ensured it didn’t just win search; it redefined the entire internet experience.

Late 2000s: Bing grows as a distant #2; Yahoo and AOL fade into niches
Bing emerged in 2009 as Microsoft’s renewed push into search, gradually carving out a stable second-place position through integration with Windows, Xbox, and, later, early AI tools. Meanwhile, Yahoo and AOL, once dominant online gateways, steadily declined into niche roles as they failed to keep pace with the speed, innovation, and machine-learning-driven improvements shaping the modern search landscape.

2010–2020 is basically 

“Google stays huge, Bing inches around in low single digits, Yahoo fades, and everyone else is tiny or regional.”

2010 worldwide search share (all devices, StatCounter)

Using StatCounter’s worldwide, all-platform data for Jan–Dec 2010: StatCounter Global Stats

Global search engine share – 2010

Around 2010, you can think in global terms like this:

• Baidu – roughly 4–5% of global queries by 2010, almost all of it from China, where Baidu already had ~60–80% of the local market, depending on the source
  
  
• Ask / AOL & other minors – engines like Ask.com and AOL together amounted to only a couple of percentage points globally, with Ask around 2–3% in the U.S. and less worldwide.
  

DuckDuckGo existed in 2010, but its share was so small that major trackers didn’t even list it separately yet.

2020 worldwide search share (all devices, StatCounter)

For Jan–Dec 2020 worldwide (again StatCounter): StatCounter Global Stats+1

Global search engine share – 2020

Two other important players by 2020:

• Baidu
  • Global share: roughly ~1% of worldwide traffic by around 2020–2021, according to StatCounter-based summaries. Dazeinfo+1
  • Reality: It’s a giant in China (60–75%+ domestic share), but because China is one country, that only translates to ~1% of global usage.
    
• DuckDuckGo
  • Global share: around 0.5–0.6% worldwide by 2020–2021, according to Statista/market summaries. Backlinko+1
  • Positioning: Privacy-first, non-tracking search. Very small globally, but much more noticeable in the U.S. and among privacy-conscious users.
    

(You could swap DuckDuckGo for Yandex if you care more about Russia than privacy search: Yandex sits around 1–2% of global share but dominates Russia’s local market. Wikipedia)

So, who controlled the “AKA Monopoly” search

If you’re talking about “who controlled search” in a global, all-device sense from 2010 to 2020:

• Google: sat between ~90–92% the entire decade.
  
• Bing: hovered in ~2–4% range globally.
  
• Yahoo: shrank from ~4% → ~1–2%.
  
• Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Ask, AOL, etc.: each around or under 1–5%, often much less globally, but sometimes dominant in specific countries or niches.

Netscape often sent people to Yahoo and other portals over time.

Internet Explorer was tightly tied to Microsoft properties (MSN Search → Live Search → Bing). 

So, browsers (Netscape, IE) were the pipes; AOL/Yahoo were the “front doors” or malls; Google/Bing, etc., are the underlying search engines.

Why did each one lose traction to the other

Why did AltaVista lose to Yahoo and then Google?

Great tech, poor focus: AltaVista was technically brilliant, but its owner (DEC, later Compaq) didn’t double down on search as a core business. It became a cluttered portal instead of a laser-focused search box.  

Portal bloat: Like others, it tried to become “everything” (news, shopping, community) and lost the clean experience that made it special. 

Missed the next wave: Google’s PageRank and superior relevance took over; AltaVista never recovered, and Yahoo eventually bought and shut it down, redirecting it to Yahoo search in 2013. 

Why did AOL lose to Yahoo (and then Google)? 

Walled garden → open web: AOL thrived in the dial-up era by providing a curated “inside AOL” experience. As broadband and the open web exploded, users didn’t want a closed garden; they wanted full web search and free portals. ISP identity: AOL’s core was subscription dial-up internet. When that business collapsed in the 2000s, its leverage over users disappeared, and it became just another portal. 

Search outsourced to Google: In 2002, AOL signed with Google to power its search and paid listings. That made AOL dependent on Google, and also trained AOL users to recognize Google results, indirectly boosting Google’s brand.

So: users escaped the AOL walled garden → went directly to Yahoo (and other portals) → and then to Google as they caught on to how much better the search quality was. 

Why did Yahoo lose traction to Google?

This is the big one, as it had a different DNA: portal vs search company.

Yahoo wanted to be a media/portal company (mail, news, finance, games, chat, etc.), not a search-first engineering company.

Google was obsessed with search quality, speed, and infrastructure 

Outsourcing core search to Google (2000–2004) 

In 2000, Yahoo decided to use Google to power its search results. This made sense short-term, but it meant whenever someone “Yahoo’d” something, they were actually seeing “Powered by Google” all over the page.  

That literally advertised their future competitor to hundreds of millions of users. 

By the early 2000s, Google’s algorithm (PageRank + lots of tweaks) produced cleaner, more relevant, faster results than Yahoo’s homegrown or licensed systems.  

Users felt it in daily use: Google usually just worked better.

Why Google has stayed the leader for the past 25 years 

Google has held on to its search dominance for over two decades because it stacked multiple advantages, product quality, data, distribution, money, ecosystem, and habit, and kept reinforcing them over time. No single factor explains it; it’s the combination that’s hard to beat.

First, Google genuinely won on quality early. When search engines like AltaVista, Lycos, and early Yahoo were cluttered and easily gamed by keyword stuffing, Google’s PageRank algorithm used links as a proxy for importance. That made search results feel cleaner, more relevant, and less spammy. Combine that with a super minimal interface, just a logo and a search box, on a fast-loading white page, and users quickly learned that Google got them to the right answer with less friction. By the early 2000s, that quality gap had already turned into a huge lead. 

And now you’ve got AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot) starting to sit in front of classic search, which is the next “king of search” battle you’re clearly thinking about.

The story of search over the last 35+ years is more than a tech history lesson; it’s a blueprint for what’s happening with AI right now.

In the 1990s, we watched the first generation of search engines fight for attention. WebCrawler was the first to let people search the full text of web pages, showing that the web could be truly discoverable instead of just browsed through links. Lycos followed with one of the earliest large-scale, algorithm-driven indexes and a growing portal of services. AltaVista raised the bar again with lightning-fast, comprehensive indexing. At one point, it felt like the most powerful search tool on the planet.

Then Yahoo entered the scene, blending human-curated directories with a portal of news, email, and media. For a moment, Yahoo was the internet for millions of people. But its focus on being a media/portal company instead of a search-first engineering company opened the door for someone else to win on pure search quality.

That “someone else” was Google.

In the early 2000s, AOL was still massive as an ISP and portal, but it had already made a key decision: it partnered with Google to power its search and paid listings. That made AOL users see “Powered by Google” at the bottom of their results, training an entire generation to trust Google’s answers.

At the same time, Google doubled down on what mattered: speed, simplicity, and relevance. PageRank used links as a proxy for importance, producing cleaner, less spammy results. The home page was minimal: just a logo and a search box. It loaded fast, worked reliably, and usually got you what you wanted on the first try.

As the 2000s progressed, Google didn’t just win search; it built an ecosystem: AdWords (now Google Ads), Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Android, and YouTube. Each product fed data, revenue, and user habits back into the core engine. By 2010, Google controlled around 90% of global search on all devices. Bing floated in the low single digits. Yahoo faded. Everyone else was either regional (like Baidu and Yandex) or niche (like DuckDuckGo).

From 2010 to 2020, the pattern was simple:

• Google stays huge
  
• Bing hangs on as a distant #2
  
• Yahoo, AOL, Ask, and others shrink into the margins
  

So what does this have to do with AI, LLMs, and Ask Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Everything.

The AI world we’re living in now looks a lot like search did in the early and mid-2000s:

• There’s a clear frontrunner in mindshare and usage (ChatGPT), but history tells us that early leaders don’t always stay on top.
  
• Other serious contenders, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, and more, are improving rapidly, fighting for their version of “the Google slot” in AI.
  
• We’re already entering the ecosystem phase, where the leading platforms are not just answering questions; they’re handling commerce, productivity, search, and integrations in one place.
  

That’s why this history of search is really a roadmap for AI.

We’re seeing the same phases play out:

1. Exploration and chaos: Many players, lots of experimentation, no clear rules.

2. Consolidation: A few winners capture most of the usage and data.

3. Ecosystem lock-in: The leader builds tools, integrations, and habits that make it hard to switch.

4. Regulation and specialization: Rules tighten, especially in high-stakes areas, and specialized vertical tools emerge.
   

In the last six months alone, we’ve seen that roadmap accelerate.

On one side, AI platforms are self-regulating more aggressively in medical, legal, and financial domains. ChatGPT and similar tools are tightening guardrails:

• They’re clearer about not replacing doctors, lawyers, or financial advisors.
  
• They’re more careful with personalized, high-risk advice.
  
• They lean harder on safety, escalation, and “information, not diagnosis.”
  

That’s a major signal: general-purpose AI will not be allowed to behave like an unregulated expert in critical fields. Over time, we’re likely to see specialized, compliant AI systems built with hospitals, law firms, and financial institutions become the long-term winners in those areas.

On the other side, AI commerce is exploding. ChatGPT can now connect directly to platforms like Shopify and Etsy, pulling real-time product data, pricing, and inventory into the conversation. In many cases, users can discover a product, evaluate it, and purchase it without ever visiting a traditional website.

We’ve moved from:

Search → click → browse → add to cart → checkout

To:

“Find me X under $Y with Z features” → review options in chat → tap Buy.

That’s a seismic shift. It means that being “part of the answer” inside an AI conversation is no longer just a visibility game; it’s a revenue game. If your products, services, and brand aren’t structured in a way AI can understand and trust, you’re not just losing impressions. You’re losing sales.

All of this leads to some hard, necessary questions:

• Are you optimizing only for Google rankings, or are you preparing for AEO and GEO, where AI chooses which brands to talk about and which products to recommend?
  
• Is your content clear, structured, and credible enough for an AI to summarize without hallucinating or misrepresenting you?
  
• How will you measure success when the “click” disappears, and the AI answers directly?
  
• What happens to your customer relationship when a transaction happens inside ChatGPT, not on your website?
  

The history of search says the winners in this new landscape will be the organizations that:

• Embrace change instead of resisting it.
  
• Invest in clarity, structure, and credibility of their content and data.
  
• Think beyond “rankings” and start thinking in terms of answers, entities, and ecosystems.

Google wasn’t the first search engine. It wasn’t the second, third, or fourth. It was the fifth. What made it the winner wasn’t timing; it was execution, focus, and a relentless commitment to user experience.

Today, ChatGPT holds a large share of AI attention, but history tells us that nothing is guaranteed. The landscape could shift again in the 2030s. What is guaranteed is that AI is permanently changing how people search, learn, and buy.

You don’t have to predict exactly which AI platform will dominate in ten years to prepare for what’s coming. You just have to accept that:

• AI will sit between your business and your customers more and more. Understanding the past will help you be ready for the future. Invest before your competition, and this will be your chance to dominate.
  
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)  and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) will matter as much as SEO once did, but SEO is the foundation for AEO and GEO currently.
  
• The brands that adapt early will compound the benefits for years, so ask yourself whether you are going to lead or follow in 2026.
  
  

And here’s the truth: most companies won’t want, or be able, to keep up with all of this alone.

So the final bit of advice is simple: if you don’t want to change with the changes, you will want to partner with a digital marketing company like Agency Jet to help you in this global shift to help your company.