I can remember a time that after a search, you’d just have a list of links. No extra boxes on the side or even an images tab, just the list of links. At the bottom of the page was the word “Google” and there would be more O’s, as they were links to other pages of results.

If there were sponsored links, it didn’t say so and you’d end up with different sites at the top of the list. So I don’t think way back there were.