Go back 15 years the web look wastely different and has actually improved quite a lot.
It's certainly very different. Whether it has improved a lot is debatable.
Perhaps more relevant is that I don't think there is any doubt that the web of today is worse than the web of five years ago. The majority of the browser plugins I routinely use today exist entirely to undo some part of that damage, and that includes having a custom stylesheet set up for almost every major web site I use.
15-20 years ago, GUI interfaces tended to suck, generally because you kept having to click through confirmations and do other such mouse dances. Nowadays UIs try to get out of your way more. Good.
But in those days, web-sites were actually better. HTML limited the in-your-face interactivity that spoiled the rest of the desktop.
People who wanted to put truly awful UI on the web had to use Flash. Now they don't.
It's a rant not the truth. There are plenty of well designed websites out there which doesn't actually make those mistakes and I believe the rant to be saturating the actual reality.
Pointing to a few examples are nothing but anecdotal evidence.
