The simplicity was important but more as a signal of quality.<p>I remember being frustrated at Altavista's or'ing of all your search terms; it often made attempts to refine your search counterproductive.<p>Google's results were just amazingingly good in comparison.<p>Also ..<p>DEC saw Altavista as way to publicise its "giant" computers. Eight Gb RAM back in 2000ish was amazing. But I and so many others could see that search was eminently suitable for a parallel solution. Using single (or few) large computers was missing an opportunity. This just reflected badly on DEC and Altavista. And I was reminded of Ken Olsen's famous quote of there being no need for a computer in the home. (unfairly apparently - it was taken out of context) It added up to a bad image.
Actually I remember my first experiences with Google. It was very weird for me that the page was so empty and I kept using AltaVista and later MetaCrawler. They seemed to be more 'serious' :D However more and more I've started to notice that the most relevant links are provided by Google and that was it ...