[pavel_lishin]

Is doing things like lazy-loading images further down the page actually good for users and readers, or only for making sure Google indexes your site?

I'd be hella miffed if I loaded a page on my laptop, then opened it up somewhere without internet access, and realized that half the page fully didn't exist.

[exiguus]

It saves bandwidth for the user. Especially if you imagine that the user does not read the entire article. And it may load the images that are in the viewport faster, as the bandwidth is not taken up by images that the user cannot yet see.