[anonymousab]

>I thought the one lesson we all learned from Clippy is that this kind of interruption is more annoying than useful

It's not about usefulness, not really. It's about engagement and retention - much like newsletter spam and annoying please-subscribe popups, The Metrics always apparently show that they work amazingly compared to a clean page.

[metaphor]

Oh yes, hand-waving "The Metrics". What do they say about how often and the speed in which reader view was enabled?