Sounds like another Cuil hype type campaign. When Google came out they didn't make any claims. Only factual performance counts.
A cite to some Google claims when they came out would be nice. (Academic papers don't count.)
I was in the SF Bay Area at the time and the "publicity" that I remember was friends saying "check this out". I don't recall Google saying anything beyond "here's how many pages we indexed".
I think that's the point shimonamit is making.