The Worst Website in the Entire World
Broadcom’s revamped VMware portal is held up as a prime example of how large corporate and “enterprise” websites have become hostile and confusing to use, with broken flows, needless redirects, and even 20‑page PDFs explaining basic tasks. Commenters tie these problems to rigid security checklists, management edicts like disabling password pasting, and perverse incentives in enterprise software and HR systems such as Workday that seem to tolerate user pain as a cost-saving or gatekeeping measure. Many broaden the critique to government, banking, and other vendor sites, arguing that enshittified UX is now pervasive wherever internal systems are exposed to end users.
Broadcom / VMware Website Experience
- Many describe the Broadcom/VMware support and download portals as hostile and confusing: broken or circular navigation, hard-to-find downloads, 404s redirected to the front page, and multi-page PDFs explaining basic tasks.
- Some note this pattern is common after acquisitions: older product-specific sites are folded into a generic corporate portal and effectively buried.
- A few point out that Broadcom’s making VMware Fusion/Workstation “free” coincides with a strategy to sunset them, not to invest in them.
Enterprise & Corporate UX Patterns
- Commenters generalize the Broadcom experience to “enterprise software”: SAP, Oracle, IBM Fix Central, SailPoint, SAP Ariba, Globalsign, etc. are cited as similarly maze-like and user-hostile.
- One explanation: internal portals often generate support tickets, which are a profit center or justify headcount, unlike consumer sites where friction directly hurts revenue.
- Others contrast this with utilities and billing sites, which tend to have at least the payment path reasonably polished.
Password, Security, and Browser-Hostile UX
- Disabling paste in password fields and over-complicated password rules are widely condemned as both usability and security anti-patterns.
- Defenses mentioned: avoiding clipboard-based malware, preventing copy-paste of mistyped passwords, reducing support load, satisfying outdated infosec checklists or regulators.
- Multiple people argue this harms disabled users, encourages weaker memorized passwords, and is often enforced by security/management over developer objections.
- Technical workarounds (browser settings, extensions, password managers that “type” instead of paste) are discussed.
Control of the Browser and User Data
- One long comment uses “don’t mess with my browser” as a springboard to critique click-wrap agreements, device “ownership,” lock-in of user content on platforms, and AI models harvesting online text without attribution or royalties.
- The argument is that tech has shifted value from users’ work to platforms through dark patterns and enclosure of the digital commons.
Other “Worst Websites” & Aesthetic Outliers
- Arngren, LingsCars, Yvette’s Bridal, and similar chaotic sites are repeatedly referenced. Many find them charming, fast, and authentic despite (or because of) their visual chaos.
- In contrast, corporate sites like Workday, government portals, banks/insurers, Google Play Console, and others are seen as blandly evil: slow, opaque, and built to serve internal metrics rather than users.