Yeah. I'm sure many remember all the other stuff that came with it last time: flash banners, popups/popunders, auto-reopening windows, etc. It was mighty crufty.
I wonder how many other developers got into disagreements back then with other departments about how that stuff "was the future" and that there "was no fighting it" and that "everybody should just accept it now." Then we got clean / low-cruft designs for a while. Now we're back indeed.
Such is the nature of cruft: it accrues. Like barnacles, the longer you sail your ship the more of it you will find encrusted on your hull. Eventually you have to roll up your sleeves and scrape it off, and when you do, you will briefly be able to enjoy a cruft-free state. But once you leave drydock, it will start accruing all over again.
True, but I think there might be limits. I hate to think what 90's designers would have done with the massive screen real estate we have available today. Would it have been worse or would they have realized they'd saturated the human brains ability to separate objects?
Interestingly, the Google home page has more stuff on it today than it did back in 2001, but appears less crufty. Good layout seems to help eliminate some of the cruft. Stuff that used to all be relegated more or less to the center of the screen has been pushed away from the main search box; available, but not interfering.
Mobile is definitely cruftier, but mainly because of the smaller screen real estate and because if you don't have their app installed, they add a modal to prompt you to get it.
Well to be fair, Google has a completely different ad model, so they don't need all that cruft on the search page. Instead they cruftify the search results page with ads. At least they're just text ads so the speed is good.
Then Google came out with one blank and 'search' and we finally exited that ugly crufty era.
Now we're back!