[makeitdouble]

I see it as a rare case of "hate the players not the game"

I've come to rely a lot on gitlab and github's web interfaces through the years for diff and quickly navigate a specific commit, or a project I don't want to checkout. All the improvements coming from more JS and Ajax have been a boon to me. Sure I could do everything locally, but it's just so much more convenient.

Same for gmail as you mention it: I wouldn't go back to the previous web mail interfaces short of getting paid a living salary just for that. Same for banking web sites, which came such a long way.

The technology and trend is a net plus, advertising company coming to ruin whatever they can ruin is par for the course. I mean, looking at newspaper, TVs, Google Search, YouTube, Instagram, AppStore search etc....making anything it touches worse is in the ad business' DNA.

[lowwave]

For sure, I agree that the ajax UI/UX offered by gmail is a game changer. And all those features that makes it convenient for users, can be accomplished without compromising security/privacy. What I don't like are companies proposing standard disguising as a some convenient feature, where in reality is just a racket to mine data from the users.