You're right. Over the past few years there have been several changes made in packaging Joomla and a number of "non-core" facilities have been removed (e.g.
WebLinks removed in J! 3,
Polls removed in J! 1.6) while a few new features have been included (e.g.
Tags in J! 3.1,
Custom Fields in J! 3.7).
Some features may be used rarely by most people or used only within certain environments (e.g LDAP user authentication).
Whether or not some of these extras could be called bloatware is a difficult to assess, however. Some of the new features have been included with the intention that they will be more broadly implemented rather than in the limited form that people may see today (e.g.
Custom Fields) or in preparation for making Joomla ready for J! 4 (e.g. the new router that's expected to arrive with J! 3.

.
Perhaps you have your own views on what you consider to be bloat. It would be interesting to compare notes.
