That was Copernic. (After Copernicus) I remember using it and there was a list of perhaps 20 engines. I remember the first to return (like, would return in 1 second not 30 seconds for the rest) was google.
Every single time, google was the first back. It wasn't always ranked the top result back then, but it was fast.
Yes! That's it. Yeah, Google came and blew everything else out of the water. I remember searching for an ocx file for something that wouldn't run, and everything kept returning some spam sites. I somehow stumbled upon Google, after some recommendation, and tried it, and the first result was a legitimate download of the actual file.
Every single time, google was the first back. It wasn't always ranked the top result back then, but it was fast.