I think a significant difference is that in the early days, the content was predominantly text, with styling/images/multimedia to embellish the content. But today it feels like a large proportion of websites put the embellishments first, the text content is thin and you often have to hunt it out.

Of course the web has evolved and has uses other than reading/absorbing information (some of them great) and multimedia content is valid, but it does seem to have become harder to find substance in amongst all the style.

When I'm surfing the web it's still usually words that I'm looking for. I think that may be going out of fashion.