[epitactic]

Sanitizing the DOM is another option, but the main problem I was trying to avoid by taking screenshots is the arms race between the cloud browser and websites, as also seen with ad blockers. A static screenshot in contrast is "up" a level, agnostic to the complex details of rendering an HTML5 website.

Another inspiration is image boards such as 4chan, where screenshots are a very common means of sharing information, including articles on websites, or even tweets. Even though it may not be technically ideal, and annotated text seems like it would be more efficient, in practice images as the lowest-common-denominator seem to be a reasonably effective format for sharing information.

On the other hand, if someone does come up with a true "browser in browser" implementation like you propose, I would be very interested in trying it out. Could be a promising idea, but a lot of work to get right.