pull-to-refresh How do Google and Apple benefit from page refreshes?

[Ertio]

User be like:

  Quote

[swipes down to scroll up]

[hits top of the page]

[swipes down one time too much]

[page refreshes]

 

Gah! Not again!

 

Google be like:

  Quote

Ha Ha, you ran into our refresh trap again, you fool! Now you have to rewatch the advertisement! Cha-ching!

 

----

 

In 2019, Google made pull-to-refresh mandatory in their mobile Chrome browser. This means it can not be turned off. While other browsers (Samsung Internet, Firefox) have the mercy to let users turn it off, many users stick to the default browser out of laziness and quietly tolerate the pain. An avalanche of complaints did not make Google change their hearts.

 

Pull-to-refresh makes the results of swiping down uncertain. The user can't be sure what happens when swiping downward, and has to pay attention before each scroll to avoid unwanted refreshes.

 

Seeing that Google has gotten away with it, Apple has also made it mandatory.

 

These companies wouldn't mandate pull-to-refresh if it didn't benefit them in some way. Google and Apple are not stupid, they know perfectly well that the pull-to-refresh gesture causes undesirable refreshes.

 

A user interface designer would have to be unbelievably stupid to not realize that the pull-to-refresh gesture invariably causes refreshing accidents because it makes the results of pulling down ambiguous. The existence of pull-to-refresh forces you to check each time that you are not at the top of the page before each scroll to avoid a refresh. Since scrolling up is done all the time while refreshing a page is rarely necessary, the presence of pull-to-refresh is almost always undesirable. When swiping down, the user almost always intends to scroll up, and Google knows this.

 

I get why it would be useful on feed-based websites where the user wants to load new content at the top, but many websites don't work that way. For example, how often did you ever need to refresh an encyclopedia article?

 

Anyone who actually needs to refresh a page can do it in half a second by using the refresh button in the submenu. A need for a gesture simply doesn't exist.

 

Possible benefits for Google:

• Is it serving more advertisements? Doubtful for banner ads because advertisements can refresh themselves using AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest) without needing a refresh of the whole page. But on video pages on some sites, accidental refreshes would cause replaying advertisements at the beginning.
• Is it appeal to modernity? "Because Twitter does it, so should we! To hell with usability!"

 

Whatever the reason was, this is what happens when too much leverage over the Internet is placed into the hands of an advertising business.

 

Possible benefits for Apple:

• Appeal to modernity. Or should we say, "Apple to modernity"?
• Apple generally hates the idea of customization and user control. Apple liked to dictate the user experience since the early days of iOS. You couldn't even disable the annoying "apps fly into home screen" animation that added a two-second delay after each unlock just so Apple's UI/UX designers can push their fragile egos by showing off their transition animation skills. (I hate transition animations and disable them wherever possible. Thankfully, Android lets you do it in the developer option. Let's hope Google doesn't take that away.)

 

So what do you think is the motive behind making it mandatory? How do Google and Apple benefit?

 

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