Is Google about marketing or a really good product?

today, as i was strolling with friends near my home, someone suggested that Google is not really about a great product and its about a brand and good amount of marketing. As per this view Google may be having a great product, i.e the search engine, which can produce relevant results for a query, but the popularity of google comes from the "brand" that has been created. Its like Google has become synonymous to search engine and people whenever they want to research about something they "google" it. I think this is true to a certain extent that google has created a brand. Google brand is everywhere: search, mail, talk, blog etc. So lets think about this, why is this? First of all its true that Google's search results are relevant, but so are Yahoo's or lets say Microsoft's. So why is it that Google's search engine is more popular? Is it because of Google's page-rank algorithm? or is it because google's intuitiveness and simplicity? I think we can all agree that all these features can be replicated and are not that important. Somehow Google has stick to a core agenda of providing search based ads without really getting diverted into too much other areas as Yahoo has. Search Engine's tried too many different things trying to attract more traffic but what emerged as the way Google has been able to cater to results in a very lucid manner. I am not sure though this is the only reason as to how Google has been able to build a "brand". But yeah customer perception can shape the future of search engine's in a powerful way. With this lets stop here to think more about this and return to this topic in future.