Besides speed, what would actually suck about surfing the internet back in the day compared to now?
My pick would be, dealing with the 'wild west' atmosphere. That being, before cyber bullying laws existed, you had bunches of people getting off scot-free with telling you to off yourself or call you a list of derogatory terms.
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Pop up ads. You'd be on a webpage and suddenly you'd be in a completely different browser window and had to x out of that one. And the next one. And the next one. And so on.
"Pop-up blocking" was originally found only in minority web browsers like iCab and Opera. Netscape didn't want to include it at first, because Netscape was dedicated to the commercialization of the web.
Which is ironic because Firefox (Netscape's descendent) is the better one and Opera is chromium based, which is developed by Google, an ad-supported company that isn't so keen on continuing to allow browsers to block them.
Opera didn't use chromium back then.
Chrome was kind of late to the web browsers market.
Google Chrome blocks pop-ups too. Google does not allow its own ads to be shown in pop-ups; this is a term of service of the AdSense product.
Pop-ups but not ads. They have moved to restrict what adblockers can block with newer versions of chromium.
Google has probably done more than any other major web company to ensure that ads aren't allowed to harm users — whether through unsolicited pop-ups, malware, or other attacks.
Malware ads used to be commonplace on ad networks; with "legitimate" websites like CNN.com showing ads (served via a third-party ad network) that attacked security holes in Windows users' browsers.
Ask anyone who worked in IT in the early 2000s. Web ads used to be a shitpit. Now they're annoying at most.
Sure but now everyone is at parity with regards to blocking ads and malware, but Google is intentionally rolling some of that back. I won't say they're 'evil' or anything (at least in this instance) but they're definitely greedy and there are much better options out there (though chromium makes up a huge majority of the market)
When we're talking about a for-profit corporation's actions, "they did it for profit!" is not typically a very useful thing to say.
This is because no matter what they do, they're doing it because they expect to profit from it.
When a for-profit corporation does something that's good for humanity, they're doing it for profit. They expect that doing that good thing will cause them to profit.
When a for-profit corporation does something that's bad for humanity, they're doing it for profit. They expect that doing that bad thing will cause them to profit.
So really, we can just note that we're referring to a for-profit corporation's actions, and just say whether they're doing something that's good or bad.
And we can try to ensure that good behaviors are profitable and bad behaviors aren't profitable.
But saying "it's for profit!!" doesn't by itself mean that it's good or bad; just that a for-profit organization did it.
Those are your words not mine. I said they're being greedy which brings with it the negative connotation of bad behavior. I stated there are alternatives out there to help reward companies with good behavior.
I'm not sure why you felt the need to explain that businesses exist to generate profit as this is common knowledge.