Searching Forward

Google understood this, search became the preferred way to move around because the Web had become so big and sites so confusing that the earliest thing to do was enter a keyword.

At the very instant that search seemed dominant, the nature of the Web began to change. While it has always been relatively easy with tools like Blogger and Movable Type, and simple blogs proliferated.

With Friendster, and then Myspace, Web pages no longer came just from corporations, universities, and government; they came from anywhere.

But democratization did little to improve design. Wordpress offered people templates for designed web pages, but few bothered to modify them.

Most blogs looked like blandly conventional websites. Although some creative folks put richer stories and picture scrapbooks on sites like LiveJournal, millions more just grabbed web cameras and posted their video to YouTube.