Acknowledgments are designed to warm the hearts of those being acknowledged. I've been one, so I know. In fiction they usually serve no other purpose for the ordinary reader, and I'm with you: they're better off omitted. I find the "just don't read them, then" counter-offer to be inane. Worried about spoiler blurbs? That advice would have you never read a blurb again for fear of finding a bad one. Don't like sex scenes in the story? Then magically know they're coming and skip an uncountable number of pages.

I don't even like "first novel dedication syndrome" where the novelist mistakes the dedication for an acknowledgment page and dedicates at once to everybody their next nine novels should have been dedicated to.