Ancient in a convenient, all-included package, yes. It's like serving videos yourself or embedding youtube/wistia/vimeo... The quick and performant way has value for some.
Yeah pretty much the same idea, but not the same packaging.
If you just want to quickly add a big pic in your blog and are no dev (noob here) this is everything you need.
Same choice as embedding a youtube/wistia/vimeo or hosting and streaming it yourself I guess.