[samwillis]

If the web had stoped innovating and improving at this level of design it wouldn't have the GDP it does now.

Your comment would almost fit better as a reply on the linked page from this other front page post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33680661

[orangepurple]

  But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all.  Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.  Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.  And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-famil...

[JadeNB]

> If the web had stoped innovating and improving at this level of design it wouldn't have the GDP it does now.

But maybe not everyone's priority is maximising the GDP of the web? (I'm not even sure what the 'D' there means, but I'm trying to take the comment in the spirit in which it must have been meant rather than excessively literally.)

[FormerBandmate]

There’s a reason Geico or Duracell’s websites (both incredibly famous Berkshire companies) don’t look like this. Berkshire is essentially an unorthodox investment fund, all of their websites are pretty sparse

[JadeNB]

> There’s a reason Geico or Duracell’s websites (both incredibly famous Berkshire companies) don’t look like this. Berkshire is essentially an unorthodox investment fund, all of their websites are pretty sparse

Of course there's a reason, but that doesn't mean there's a good reason. Big commercial websites do not choose their design out of a desire best to serve their customers, but out of a desire best to attract attention and to funnel that attention towards their ends—and what a website most wants us to do is not necessarily what is best for us to do.