Ironcially, I can remember Yahoo being lauded very early on for the same thing (spartan user interface, insanely fast load times, etc.) back when it started. I

Ironcially, I can remember Yahoo being lauded very early on for the same thing (spartan user interface, insanely fast load times, etc.) back when it started. If anything, Google was a return back to spartan interfaces after the initial batch of search engines got too caught up in portal mania.