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Before the search that we know of today, there were directories (see http://dmoz.org for example) where you submitted your site. Originally it was a list, then a hierarchal list, then there so many entries they let you search their database, then they crawl the web to find other sites, then they search the _content_ of other sites, so you can see how it evolved.

Web rings and pages of links to other sites were also common, basically what RG did, but more reciprocal.

> Why do they depend on Google's mercy?

http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...

Google provide them users.

Google has been around since the beginning.

>what did companies do before there was Google?

They didn't.

They advertised.

Smaller companies seem to be replacing the "advertising dept." with "our rank on Google dept.", in which case it's not exactly Google's fault they are dependent on Google, any more than when a Craigslist scraper is dependent on Craigslist.