[indalo]

these are super weak. I dont need a background image indexed. there are plenty of ways to bundle and optimize images using webpack and the like. It sounds like someone using the least amount of tools available to make a case for a better tool, which plenty of exist...

[khalwat]

Author here. I'm familiar with optimizing images via webpack and the like; there's an article I wrote on the same site as this one detailing just that (amongst other things):

https://nystudio107.com/blog/an-annotated-webpack-4-config-f...

The issue is that for many larger sites that are content-managed, the images aren't known at build time. So you need some kind of mechanism in place to deal with optimizing user-uploaded images.

Obviously you don't want truly decorative images indexed; but that's not what the article is discussing (except in the "SO WHEN IS IT GOOD?" section). It's discussing the abuse of CSS background-image for content images, something I've seen as being quite prevalent.

As the article mentioned, this is bad for accessibility, SEO, performances, and other lesser issues.

[foota]

That is not what indexing is wrt Google. They mean it won't be searchable.