> The UI was much less visually dense, but more value-dense by orders of magnitude. The results speak for themselves: Google went from a $23B valuation in 2004 to being worth over $2T today — closing in on a 100x increase. Yahoo went from being worth $125B in 2000 to being sold for $4.8B — less than 3% of its peak value.
Wait what??? THAT'S how you explain the differences in how their businesses fared - by the density of their UI?
> THAT'S how you explain the differences in how their businesses fared - by the density of their UI?
Well it's a silly statement to make of course, BUT there is some truth behind it. Their search pages are a microcosm of their approaches to business. In 1999, the search page was THE reason Google was able to make traction. And you can still see the influence of that minimal design in their stuff today. It's kinda their thing.
Yahoo! could have copied them. When they felt Google breathing down their neck that would have been the obvious thing to do (or preferably, way before it got that far). But to this very day they are stuck in their old ways! Amazing.
Google in 2004 was also an advertising company - it's not like there was a point where you paid for searching directly. 2024 Google is more of an everything company that's primarily funded by advertising - they tap into search and every kind of content imaginable, make hardware, do research. It's about the number of services - in 2004, Google had barely launched Gmail yet.
Wait what??? THAT'S how you explain the differences in how their businesses fared - by the density of their UI?