7 ms·
Some images are base64 in URLs in Google image search results for their thumbnails. Does anyone have any idea why? Search "Pepsi can" and some when you right c
by wmab 3y ago
Some images are base64 in URLs in Google image search results for their thumbnails. Does anyone have any idea why?
Search "Pepsi can" and some when you right click > copy image address will result in "data:image/jpeg;base64,/.../" instead of the website's image. Presumably to limit server cost / make the browser render? It's not for all sites, so perhaps more common sites (Walmart for example) it gives the correct image URL.
Pepsi can image from:
[1] https://crescentmarket.shop/ https://crescentmarket.shop/ data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2...//9k=
[2] But when you click through: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQwXbLGVeQByPHWaFrMHeAcd0XYA5gLHMzHFlZRHXpqqRoSXTRx8bouJBoHiFGxRTpz6VQ&usqp=CAU https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQwXbLG...
[3] Paperpunchplus.com shows the correct image URL
https://www.paperpunchplus.com/https://cdn3.evostore.io/productimages/vow_premium/l/brt00145.jpg https://www.paperpunchplus.com/https://cdn3.evostore.io/prod...
- jstarfish 3y agoSpecifically for a gallery page of search results, I'd guess that it's to provide a more-consistent experience. When you load that results page, you'd be reaching out to ~100+ different domains that will respond and render the images at different rates (and some will fail to load at all). Base64-encoding lets you shove binary content into caches like Redis, retrieval and embedding of which would be preferable to hotlinking to a slow site. Then most of the page gets rendered at the same time client-side.