I was using yahoo and a friend told me to try google it was not really good looking but the result ranking was better. It was in ~1998 as well. (And I was using AOL !)

I don't remember the exact year but I remember first reading about Google in a slashdot thread where someone was extolling its virtues. I was using either webcrawler or metacrawler at the time; it's difficult to remember. I also don't remember if Google became my homepage that day if it took a few days before it stuck, but it was a very fast transition.

I heard from an employee that used to work at my Uncle's company (real estate) around Feb-Mar, in 2000. Used it a couple of times and I was hooked.

These days I find myself jumping between DuckDuckGo and Google though.

I was in school using Dogpile and some friends recommended it to me.

/.

And at the time - I was working as the IT manager fora company on the peninsula -- I switched out standard image to make the default homepage for all machines point to google.

this was ~1998?