[litewulf]

I think it helped. It wasn't the ONLY factor (the search engine was pretty good too ;)), but I think displaying results faster (smaller page size, more focused UI), contributes positively to the experience.

Perhaps there are UIs that would have resulted in faster growth or more total marketshare, but there are definitely UIs that would have made things far worse. I think the "headroom" for growth is pretty low, there were so many competing services then, if you can remember, that I find it hard to believe that there was only Google with a different looking interface.