Websites would probably be stuck with "pay for inclusion" and all the other nastiness of the early days of search. Google also labeled our ads clearly; the FTC had to warn ~8 other search engines not to label paid results as "partner" listings and similar things. We also took a stand against pop-up ads in the early days when many other major search engines were doing pop-ups on their site. Not to mention that search engine spam was pretty bad in those days.
Certainly I'm glad that Google disclosed DMCA complaints (instead of dropping them, which every other major search engine did), push backed on overly broad DOJ subpoenas that tried to get 2 months of user queries, worked hard not to partner with scumware/malware companies, helped to push back on things like SOPA, and launched a transparency report to shine a light on government requests to take down information around the world.
Google has also been a major proponent of open source (e.g. Summer of Code, Android, Chromium), not to mention espousing principles like data liberation: http://www.dataliberation.org/ . Overall, I think the web would have been quite a bit worse without Google: slower, less organized, more closed, and definitely spammier.
Certainly I'm glad that Google disclosed DMCA complaints (instead of dropping them, which every other major search engine did), push backed on overly broad DOJ subpoenas that tried to get 2 months of user queries, worked hard not to partner with scumware/malware companies, helped to push back on things like SOPA, and launched a transparency report to shine a light on government requests to take down information around the world.
Google has also been a major proponent of open source (e.g. Summer of Code, Android, Chromium), not to mention espousing principles like data liberation: http://www.dataliberation.org/ . Overall, I think the web would have been quite a bit worse without Google: slower, less organized, more closed, and definitely spammier.