Well, that wasn't really about what they thought people wanted, it was about what toolbar makers thought could get away with (or trick people into). They wanted everyone to use their toolbar filled with ads. And some unsophisticated users ended up installing 10 different toolbars.

An example from the late 90s might be the idea that people wanted intro animations and music on web sites, heh.

Obviously, it depends on the site.

However, when you're on YouTube you don't want the site to suggest videos you're not interested in (or Amazon, products).

When you're on a blog, you don't want "related articles" to list articles you've already read.

Etc. Etc.

I don't know if people want this--in part because they don't even realize these features exist--but I'm sure the opposite can be annoying.

It also depends how modern techniques are used, but arguining that we have to go back to static HTML because it's better doesn't make sense to me.

As a user of both YouTube and Amazon.com I really don't want either recommendations you mentioned. I go to YouTube to watch specific videos and I go to Amazon to buy specific things. Those organizations want to give me recommendations but if I could turn them off and gain performance I would do that in a heartbeat.

Ah, I see. I discover awesome things on both platforms this way.

On the performance side, Hacker News still takes 100MB of memory in Chrome, so...

You cannot create an efficient static page with recommends below a video?

(clientside that is; serverside it would be dynamic but Chrome should not be bothered, it is, but that is another story)

A slow one, yes.