15 years of increasing clutter

Most of the comments I've seen on this 15-year retrospective of Yahoo's main page have focused on the aesthetics: "Wow, we've come so far since the dark ages of web design!" All props to the creative services people, since they've had to struggle with the increasing visual complexity of the page.

The Ur-entry page had one purpose: help me find things. Now, it packs into limited browser space a whole lot more, including...

• Things I use (e-mail, weather, and a few other things)
• Things I'd never use (horoscopes)
• Things that they've helpfully provided, but are no help to me (today's top searches)
• Things that are completely mysterious to me (what the heck is Shine?)
• Things that I might use someday, but don't matter to me now (yellow pages)
• Things that irritate the hell out of me ("newsvertisements" about TV and movies)

From this perspective, the 15-year overview of Yahoo entry pages is a window into Yahoo's business strategy, as it mutated from a search provider into a content provider.