Looks like Microsoft finally got some of that old-time simplicity religion: Today, the news hit that Microsoft would be rolling out a stripped-down and personalized version of its MSN homepage. This was no small feat; from the moment that the first version of the site rolled out a decade ago, MSN.com and Yahoo seemed in neck-and-neck competition to see which could clog its landing page with the most hyperlinks.

Let's take a trip in the DeLorean time machine back to 1999, when the MSN homepage looked like this (image courtesy of Microsoft's MSN Blog):

The site underwent some fairly radical design revisions during the ensuing years, but the end result was always the same. Take a look at the MSN page as it stands now:

Sometimes, when your garage or tool shed is too crowded with years' worth of junk and bric-a-brac, it's simply not worth the time or energy to try to methodically clean it out piece by piece. Sometimes the best solution is to head down to the local gas station and buy a few gallons of premium unleaded in a can, then return to your own personal Augean Stables, burn them to the ground and start anew.

This was the MSN's team approach to the new version of the home page. They hacked away at all those semiuseless links and put an emphasis on white space. In addition, they took a page from Yahoo's own recent Web-property revision and personalized the thing to the hilt: Now your Facebook and Twitter feeds can be displayed directly on the MSN home page, right next to the news report that Mickey Rourke drove a flaming police car the wrong way over the Brooklyn Bridge last night.

I'm kidding about the news item, but you should probably see the new version of MSN for yourself (it's also available here):

And it only took a combined threat from Yahoo and Google to turn Microsoft away from Web clutter.

Google, of course, has steadfastly refused for years to lard its search site with added "features"--in some ways, the search giant's early success could be attributed to all the users who saw it as a refuge from visually riotous alternatives.

But then Yahoo decided to undertake its own site revision, as part of its $100 million "It's You!" rebranding campaign. Suddenly Yahoo's home page was stripped down, and personalized for the individual user. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz stood up before a roomful of media at the NASDAQ MarketSite in Times Square and, after characterizing us assembled ink-strained wretches as cynical beasts, suggested that the new version of the site would boost both circulation and advertising dollars.

I'm betting that executives within Redmond saw that and thought: No way we get left behind. Microsoft has already been undergoing such seismic change this year--new operating system, a shift in its Zune strategy from "device" to "ecosystem," the release of Bing--so the momentum was probably already there to make some changes to MSN.com.

What does everybody think of the new design?