Do web sites seem to be slower than they were some years ago? Many would have you believe that it is because of your computer or internet connection speed, but in reality most major web sites take longer to load than they did in the past. Based on past versions of pages kept by archive.org, here is how the download size of different websites' home pages (in kilobytes) have changed in the past ten years, not including images:

Years with "N/A" mean that a website didn't exist at the time, or data isn't available. It seems that many web designers no longer have any concern for efficiency, forgetting that a large number of people still use dial-up internet connections and/or older computers, not to mention the massive waste of bandwidth. It is similar to the trend in software, in which many programmers no longer make the effort to design software which will work at lower processor speeds or in smaller amounts of memory. People talk about the "need" for faster and faster internet connections and computers, but greater efficiency is what is actually needed.

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