Comment by shurcooL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shurcooL | Hacker News Reader

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    For example, if you need to jump on the internet to look
    up Muddy Waters’ real name, and instead of “McKinley
    Morganfield” you get pop-up ads, screen takeovers,
    “sponsored” content and other third-party advertising-
    driven distraction, then you know what browser overkill
    feels like.

What? I don't understand how that's possible. If you just google search for Muddy Waters, it tells you his real name right on the search results screen. Even if it didn't, his Wikipedia page is one of the first results, and it doesn't have any pop-up ads, screen takeovers, etc.

Am I missing something, or can someone explain what they're referring to?

> Am I missing something

I think you're taking the example a bit too literally. You know exactly what they're talking about. It's become almost impossible to use a phone browser for anything quick. They are slow to begin with, and with all the ads and other crap it's just not even worth it half the time.

I once read that for this reason, many people send screenshots instead of links - so others don't have to reproduce the right sequence of closing ads, etc to show the content the user is interested in sharing.

Sure, but then you're depending on Google search. And hoping that the information they bring to the top is actually correct. When you actually have to peruse the search list and click on a site, that's when the trouble begins.

When I'm asked to look something up on my LG G2 budget phone, I usually just say "Can't, sorry" or "Sure, give me a few minutes".

That's easy, Firefox could just download a copy of The Internet on installation and run an indexer over it, so that you could look up any information you need. How foolish of them!

Wikipedia's banner ads have grown effectively into full-page interstitials. And then after I blocked the first one, there was a second one embedded in the article.

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