On Kottke.org today there was a post to Wakeuplater which goes over some high profile web design changes over the last 10-15 years. The scary part is that I remember most of those web sites!!!
For comparison, you can see the evolution of Club Josh here.
I must admit I still am not a huge fan of Flash sites, but I really like the direction that sites like CNN and yahoo have taken in recent years. They are able to present tons of information in a clean setting. This is what I strove towards when I was at Edmunds. Speaking of Edmunds, I think they are doing a good job of keeping that mantra alive, its unfortunate that they are a business and have to display all those banner ads.