I'd date the actual, functional takeover somewhat later than that, but the web really was a lot more fun pre-dotcom-bubble. I'm not sure I would say I want to go back to it, exactly, but there sure is a lot that I miss.
Eh, there is a lot to be missed from the 'net, yes; but from the web? Like what? I mean, even when we're generous, 'pre-dotcom-bubble' is 'pre-2000' - the web was crap back then.
- It was much lighter; entire websites used to weight less than a single JS file today. We've increased the size of pages by an order of magnitude (and processing expense by at least two) for no real reason except laziness.
- The SaaS/cloud model wasn't so popular, which means trying to lock you in by stealing your data, or doing absolutely ridiculous things like IoT does, wasn't something you saw.
But that's how it's presented, not content. Look I dislike 5mb pages with 2 paragraphs of text content as much as the next guy, but if I had to choose between that and 1000 shitty Geocities 'personal homepages' and the vast wealth of information that can be found on the internet today, I'd choose today in a heartbeat.
How can someone claim with a straight face "but the web really was a lot more fun pre-dotcom-bubble" ? Good luck trying to find anything outside of nerd subculture and physics/math/CS content (exaggeration of course, but the core is true). (of course it could be 'true' if all one cares about is nerd subculture and physics/math/CS content...)
There is little actual content in present day Internet relative to its size. Look, what is produced on those websites that also tend to carry heavy presentation is not content. Real content is Wikipedia, or Hacker News, or various people and their various topical subpages, personal blogs, up and including stuff hosted at Geocities and Tripod Lycos. What is not content is most of the stuff that's created for money, including majority of today's "journalism". Information that is shallow, false and/or useless, and that exists only to make you click or buy.
90% of for-profit content could disappear just like that, and humanity would be much better off. Every information that is valuable, you can almost always find for free, posted by people who don't try to use you.
Bandwidth was more scarce too. If not for the commercial explosion the Qwests and Level 3s of the world would not have spent billions laying fiberoptics.