Asking permission is spamming IMHO.

But that's (atleast on Chrome, for me) is just an Alert window, which is just as spammable.

But there is no motivation to use alert. There is a huge reward for spammers to get a yes to a notifications prompt, you can then create them even when the browser is closed or when the user is not even on the website. However even so, they are so necessary for applications that this is probably worth it.

Yeah it's the principle of the thing though, when I'm browsing around and constantly getting yelled out (dialog pop ups, etc.) to subscribe to notifications it's really no different than the bad old days of pop ups and pop unders. If a site wants to be a jerk and spam alert dialogs that's fine and they might trick me once but I'll never visit the site again. However with notifications it's junk that every website feels they need to have and is almost unavoidable these days.

That's odd, I've browsed dozens of sites today and didn't get any notification permission dialogs. Perhaps you're exaggerating slightly?

I’ve noticed that when browsing the web without ad blockers, you are constantly spammed for such dialogs, and ads that vibrate your phone, etc. Quite annoying.

>In Safari websites have to ask permission before it can send you notifications. They can't just 'spam' you.

Since people visit tens of new websites everyday, asking permission once is also close to spamming -- it's a non solicited popup for something most don't care and don't want.

And don't get me started with the BS "This site uses cookies, OK/Not OK" we get in Europe...

>From my experience people tend to visit the same few sites everyday.

It's a power distribution. They visit their few sites everyday, but they also visit a long tail of sites for different things.

Except if we're talking about Aunt May/Uncle Paul, who only go from their Outlook Mail to Facebook.