Most people aren't software developers (or similar types), their browsing habits aren't grounded in their continually-honed digital search and retrieval skills.

Most people aren't software developers (or similar types), their browsing habits aren't grounded in their continually-honed digital search and retrieval skills. They like pretty pictures. They don't mind being distracted as much (all those news websites we find god-awful, with tons of display ads and flashing colors - do you assume those businesses don't know what they're doing?). They don't always visit a website with a singular intent to extract the relevant data as quickly as possible and move on. There is so much UI/UX-related ranting on HN from the power user perspective; a lot of people just can't believe how amazingly stupid these companies are, how they haven't done any research or testing, how some exec just wanted to fuck with the design for the hell of it. The reality is, they just aren't optimizing for you, especially if advertising is their main source of revenue. I do think it's important for them to make the power users happy enough, because they are the influencers and early-adopters that the others will follow, but they're going to have a hard time putting some nerd rage before the piles of cash flowing in. (This post wasn't specifically aimed at you, I do agree with much of your argument, but we have to keep in mind that we aren't the only user class, we're actually a relatively small one.)