On my phone, I switched from Chrome to Firefox because many websites had ads that used the phone vibrator, others redirected to the play store, etc. It's insane and you can't disable it from Chrome...

What? Android lets websites vibrate your phone and launch the Play store without permission? That's insane. This is one of the reasons I will never have an android phone.

There's an HTML5 API for vibrating devices, including phones; this isn't necessarily an Android-specific problem, and there are legitimate reasons for browser content to use features like vibration. (It isn't implemented in Safari, but it apparently works in other browsers on iDevices.)

The Play store launching without permission I haven't seen, so I can't guess at.

Launching the play store just uses a custom url that is handled by the play store app. See: https://developer.android.com/distribute/tools/promote/linki...

You do realize that happens on iOS devices as well right? Open any iTunes/appstore link and it gets opens in the respective native app

I have an Android phone, and I've never seen anything like this.

Then again, I don't do a lot of web surfing on my phone, and when I do, I use Firefox with uBlock Origin. Smooth sailing here....

Does iPhone even allow you to use a different browser? That's why I would never own an iPhone: you're supposed to pay a ton of money for something you can't replace the battery on or upgrade the storage on, and then you're not even allowed to customize it in any way or use any alternative apps to the Apple ones.

Holy shit, is that actually a thing? Ads that can make your phone vibrate? Does it affect iOS or Android or both?

This. That damn vibrate is so annoying. Especially as someone who wakes up 30 mins before my alarm, and decides to read news on my phone with my wife asleep next to me.

Here, and people say that Apple is holding back 'the open web' by not implementing all these web standards.

Maybe people will start realising why...

It will be like Motorola shipping "the first Android tablet with Flash" then quickly giving up on the idea

But, why not just stop visiting those sites and instead visit sites that run ads in ways you agree with. Kind of like how its better to not willfully infringe on copyright to "stick it" to some random megacorp. Instead just support the people who're doing things you agree with.

I do that too. My following visits are usually due to some random link posted here, reddit, social networks or through friends or colleagues. If I did not do that I would probably have to completely stop commenting on news and opinion pieces... Which could be a gread thing for my evenings (cue "someone is wrong on the internet" XKCD comic), but still. :P

I pay for a couple of online newspapers (one is generic, the other specialized in something I'm interested in) too, because what they write is high quality content in my eyes and worth it.

Well, how many new domains are you visiting each day? There are countless ways of blocking domains in some "one-click" fashion, whenever you visit one that you don't like. So you can still get what you want without using ad-block.