And early Google was 'just' a search engine, something that already existed in some forms, that looked totally unlike the Google of today. You are correct, but what are you trying to say? All companies are going to be 'lame' early on by definition.
There are any # of co's not lame early on: Google, Adobe, Zee Aero, Joby, Viv/Siri, Cruise, Magic Leap, DeepMind, Vicarious…
Indexing and rating web pages based on links back to pages. Basically a massive "outer join" on the web. Basically a software implementation of how academic papers are rated, but technically a massive data processing exercise - not just a good idea in theory but required a great deal of engineering skill to implement.