There was a definite shift in User Interfaces that we can associate with the huge influx of people from the advertising and media space in the ad-supported web. Early web sites were mostly programmer affairs, with the ocasional designer to build a few assets here and there. UX people were mostly psychologists or even computer scientists that were more interested in arcane issues like accessibility and semantics, they didn't even call themselves UX, they were usability specialists.

Now UX is mostly a territory of designers forged intellectually in the media and advertising space. And this has spread even outside the web.

Yeah, UIs now look gorgeous, but a lot of times, the beauty comes at the expense of functionality and usability.

In any culture that is dominated by advertisers, form dominates function. Appearance trumps content.