The internet is supposed to make everything faster....

That annoys the hell out of me. I think part of it is so they can boast to advertisers about how many members they have while keeping quiet about how many registered for one visit and never came back. I also hate sites that allow you to see the content but fill a large part of the screen with a "register to keep up to date with our site" form, which never achieves the effect they want because it means I'll try to avoid their site whenever I can.

Another thing that annoys me is when you search for something using your favourite search engine and it gives you a link to the page you want, but when you try to follow that link the site redirects you to its main page so it can show you some special offers or features and then forces you to try to search again to locate the page you wanted to see.

A lot of websites seem to think they have control over their visitors as if they'd just walked into a physical shop, but what they don't take into account is that there are many other similar websites and those sites are only a click of the mouse away. If they throw any obstruction into my path that is going to take me more than a couple of seconds to pass then it's quicker for me to get past it by going to a rival site.

They need to sell your data so advertisers can target you directly with appropriate products based on your demographics and browser history.

If you're not being directed to the right page then that's really poor. Any company that is doing that doesn't have a very good search account set up.

Yeah, all that Big Brother stuff is creepy. But occasionally one is amused. I let my grandson look up the football results on my iPad so 'my news' is all footie results.

Yeah one of the main weaknesses of the whole system. It's device rather than user based so it gets confused like that.

Of course another major reason for registering/logging in is to try and distinguish between users as well as to follow you between devices.

It's also not very good at figuring out when you've bought things hence why you still get followed by ads for things you've already bought.

That's probably to prevent software scanning the site to get a copy of all the fares.

Yeah booking.com does that to me all the time even for trips to Australia. How many times a year do they think people pop over there!

I only see ads when I'm using free wifi, e.g. at a cinema or theatre.  I suppose that's the price you pay, but I resolutely block every damn one.  None is appropriate to me anyway as I chose what I thought was a gender-neutral user name but everyone seems to think I'm a bloke.

Doesn't Costco do that? Though I guess it's not a High St shop.