One of my favorite Web bugaboos has always been bloatware. (This cute guy came up in a search for the term, but he's a blowfish, delicious batter-fried with tarter sauce. Like an aquatic drumstick.)

My first run-in with this imperative was over a decade ago now, at the old Interactive Age. The art director wanted to force folks to go through her home page before getting to my daily news hole. The home page was pretty, a mock-up of each magazine's cover. But it was bloatware.

Bloatware wastes time without providing value. And it's creeping into the Web again.

Two examples:

1. MSNBC has become bloatware central. No content can be seen until all the ads load. You can watch 'em, squirming and twitching, on the bottom line of your browser screen. The ads often bleed right into the content (at least when I'm using Firefox) and you can spend a full two minutes (an eternity in Internet time) waiting for a simple AP story to load. Oh, and you can't find the good stuff, like Keith Olbermann's blog, unless you've already bookmarked it, because it's hidden down at the bottom of hte main page.
2. FoodTV was once one of my favorite sites, but no more. I don't know what their problem is. The page takes forever to find, forever to load, and the search engine has become useless. You're much better off using Google, adding the name of the show where you saw the recipe, and hoping you get lucky.