AdSense wasn't a thing until 2003. Google didn't have much revenue before that. However, they still surpassed their competition in quality of search results long before...
Yes. My point is that Google had a temporary search quality advantage… then AdSense-fueled revenue allowed them to convert that to a durable moat by outspending their competitors.
That didn't happen because they were magically amazing at search forever.
It happened because Google had a good business plan and could afford to throw gobs of money at engineers and infrastructure, in quantities that even Microsoft was unwilling to match.