That’s overstating it. There’s a reason Google took over: it was better pretty much all around. The original Google algorithm was a really amazing tool for finding quality content on the web as it existed in those days. That was before SEO drove all these focused efforts on gaming the system.

With that said, Alta Vista definitely was the most promising tool before Google, and it had some potential if it hadn’t been so poorly managed by DEC. They simply saw it as a cool demo for their Alpha server platform, and never had any vision for it as a meaningful product on its own.