>Is it just me or has the mobile web taken a nosedive in recent years?
It's because "desktop" web is difficult for newbies.
People like you and I love the "desktop" web because we grew up using desktop computers. We don't mind firing up our web browser, typing in a URL and poking around for tiny menu items using CSS that's optimized for big HD desktop monitors. That's what we're used to and that's what we think is normal.
Nowadays, everybody- even your grandma- is on the inernet. Everybody's using an iPhone with a tiny screen and large fonts. Opening up a web browser to browse a website is just something people no longer do.
Grandma would much rather have an app on her home screen that connects her to the world rather than a bookmark in Google Chrome.
Not everybody is a nerd like you and me. The internet has exploded in ways we never imagined, and now we're going to have to deal with everything being optimized for the average user.
I don't know, I seem to hear now and then complaints from relatively non-nerdy people about websites are bugging them about apps or don't work or force them to use their computer because the mobile page doesn't have some necessary feature. Besides, even if everyone is using, say, Reddit, from a dedicated reddit app, links they click will still open in a web view. A link to a medium.com article will still bug you about getting the app; you're there from a dedicated app, but not from _their_ app. Similarly, if an image happens to open in an imgur.com web view instead of a dedicated image viewer, there will be "Get the app" buttons hovering over the image - again, you're visiting their content from a dedicated app, but not _their_ app.
If mobile web pages did just enough to make it obvious to their users that there are apps which the user can download, I'd believe you that it's just corporations being altruistic and wanting the best user experience for their users. They don't though. They intentionally break their mobile pages by removing important functionality, they have modals which reappear for every load trying to trick you by making the big orange "Continue" button take you to the app store, while having a tiny link which is easy to miss-click taking you to the page you're actually trying to visit, they put "get the app"-buttons _over_ the content, sometimes even with no close button, they try to distract you from the content you're trying to read by making their "Get the app" buttons fucking animate around.
This is not just corporations being altruistic and keeping their users' well-being at heart. This is corporations wanting to optimize for user interaction and data collection, and the best way to do that is to make their users use a dedicated app for just their content, where the user will always be reminded that they should check Imgur whenever they unlock their phones, they can send their users a notification about what's trending on /r/AskReddit if they detect their users haven't used their app for a while, they can make sure their users won't leave for a competitor as easily.
It's because "desktop" web is difficult for newbies.
People like you and I love the "desktop" web because we grew up using desktop computers. We don't mind firing up our web browser, typing in a URL and poking around for tiny menu items using CSS that's optimized for big HD desktop monitors. That's what we're used to and that's what we think is normal.
Nowadays, everybody- even your grandma- is on the inernet. Everybody's using an iPhone with a tiny screen and large fonts. Opening up a web browser to browse a website is just something people no longer do.
Grandma would much rather have an app on her home screen that connects her to the world rather than a bookmark in Google Chrome.
Not everybody is a nerd like you and me. The internet has exploded in ways we never imagined, and now we're going to have to deal with everything being optimized for the average user.