Mind you that you're writing that point on news.ycombinator.com (another '90s-esque site).

Maybe people prefer a "newer" web interface when it doesn't have ads, banners, popups, auto-playing-content, clutter (see yahoo), oversized images, 25 tracking scripts loading, but the lesson seems to be that too simple trumps too complex. An example that gets it exactly right IMHO is gmail.

The OTHER problem with having a nice UI is then people start to want to redesign every year, buy new logos, constantly adapt new design and FE trends (make it flat! make it angular! make it ES6! make it react! now pre-render on the server!).