Chrome 69 brought new animation for favorite sites icons. They now fade in. Why? I don’t know.
There are animations and there are animations. New tab, for example, communicates clearly what’s going on: old ones shink, new one appears on the right. It’s quick, enjoyable and justified.
Site icons though are confusing. Why was the page empty in the first place? Where do icons come from? Why do we need it at all? Why is it so slow? Why do I need to be reminded of it every time I open a new tab?
It feels more like someone thought “animations are cool, so I’ll pick one at random and just add it, and everything will look cooler with it”. Well, it doesn’t work like that.