Easy for you to say sitting in your first-world, comfortable house with a job that pays you $250,000 USD a year. Try visiting a third (or even second) world country.
Why on earth would one trade off a short, static unique identifier for a potentially long, dynamic "link" that essentially binds all data to some crappy API that will be outdated in a few years? Is it really _that_ hard to use keys?
Hate on Google / Chrome / Proprietary / Lock-In / Whatever buzzword (tm) you want, but this would _never_ happen in Chrome. And it's the reason why Firefox will die to Chrome. BRING ON THE IN-DENIAL DOWNVOTES.
The irony is, the same people complaining about 500kb are probably the same people using a 100MB+ terminal emulator built using a web browser (i.e. hyper).
I can live with that. But I can't live with a web browser terminal emulator that markets this as a spectacular feature. I mean, c'mon really? Where is the level where JavaScript masturbation needs to stop?
Voicing dislike with brutal honesty is far more effective. And it's the truth. Why should the truth be watered down? Just to make a few sensitive people feel better? That's not reality. As far as I'm concerned, that is fraud.