Yes, but it was no secret that Google's page ranking was based on counting links from different web-pages; I think Page/Brin even wrote a paper about this when Google was in its infancy. But Google clearly had better ranking at first, but it would not help the others if their ranking was better than Google's, since the "paid results" polluted their search results so much they became a joke. A lot of the paid results was "adult content" as well, creating a somewhat strange atmosphere during presentations if the lecturer had to preform an internet search. Although a large part of the www was adult content in the late 90's :-)
The competition doomed their own business by selling search results; they really did not play the long-game, but went for the quick cash. I guess most people would have...