Why did pictures on the internet get small?

[Mauslag PIngman]

Hello. I've been on the internet for awhile and I remember in olden times I would sometimes find huge, high resolution pictures on websites. Back then I'd search images on a web search called "alltheweb.com". They no longer exist. There was some kind of financial meltdown and stuff in stores got crappier and more expensive and on the internet pictures got fuzzier and smaller. I like high rez and I like big. Is it too expensive now to put up big, high rez or what is the problem? Who's behind this decision? I mean who is this mean person that forces me with my failing vision to squint and try to see things that people want to share?

Also, I'd probably be willing to pay a little more for bigger, high rez but that doesn't matter. It just isn't offered which is very anti capitalist. If there is a demand, someone should fill it.

[Ghoulish]

Money! Is the bottom line, look at this very site, a 20mb gif was added to friday facts to show off the loader and BOOM - 8 terabytes of extra data usage, and a big bill from the web sites hosting company for going over the allotted allowance.

Also, with social media its the download / re upload cycle, which causes the quality degradation.

[Koub]

You forget that basically every one watches things on their phone, on sites like instagram, pinterest, and stuff. There need to be a lot of room for massive advertisement banners, so the images must remain not too big.

[Mauslag PIngman]

Phones. That's something I hadn't thought of. That might be part of it but I think the previous guy got it mostly right in thinking the web hosting sites just want a lot of money so people went for smaller pictures.

[zytukin]

when it comes to website images, smaller = faster loading and less storage/bandwidth usage.
Faster loading = happier visitors, less bandwidth/storage = less running cost + happier visitors.

As for images for personal use, they are still out there.
If you use google, select images, then go to 'search tools' in the menu bar.
You can define various attributes such as picture dimensions.

[Mauslag PIngman]

Wow. I didn't know those tools existed. I stopped going to google images a long time ago. They help you find big images but they make you work for them. You have to set parameters and then go to the site because it doesn't just show you the big pics in the results. You might even have to sign in, register and even pay sometimes. In the old days I'd just go to alltheweb.com and click on images and I could type in anything and get thousands of results and some of the pics were very high def and gigantic. You just clicked on them and they'd appear which was far superior. They've turned it into a huge chore so I don't bother.