Yahoo has been redesigned. Now with more ads than ever! (Image from Mosdev.)

I'm old enough to remember the original Yahoo, a site that deliberately toned down its graphics to load faster. I know that's old-fashioned today, now that so many people have broadband connections.

But did they have to turn it into Excite?

The initial load in front of me has a graphic ad for Oral B, a text box with ads from Dell, L.L. Bean and Visa, among others, and a little H-P button near the bottom of the page. There is also a house ad for Yahoo's ISP service, celebrity photos, and all the profit-making "services" (mobile, photo, etc.) have been pushed to the top of the page, while the old menu of subject choices (which don't pay) are squeezed into a lower corner.

Of course this page still loads faster than MSN.Com and AOL.Com. But Yahoo has made it clear today that it's not a search company at all, but what we used to call back in the day a "portal," an "online service," which wants (more than anything) to keep you in its walled garden, clicking on its ads to the exlusion of all else.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...