by MtnDon » Wed Jul 12, 2017 9:20 am
If you use the chrome browser and right click and "search google for image" on one of the images that comes up with the PB notice the results page comes up with "about 25,270,000,000 results (0.65 seconds) ". That is a whole bunch of pages! Every time one of those pages is viewed PB serves up the file and pays for the bandwidth use.
While I agree that PB has decimated the images posted on an extraordinary number of forums, blogs, etc. we would have the same result if PB had simply gone out of business. PB offered free image storage and free hotlinking when they started out. I too took advantage of them, all the while wondering how they could afford to do that. Sure there is/was some revenue from ads most likely... some ads produce a small flow of income just by displaying when someone opens a PB page; not all need to be clicked on. But it is a small small amount.
When an image stored on a PB server is displayed in a forum or blog message, there is no chance of any income. Displaying an image in a forum or blog post only costs PB bandwidth and bandwidth cost equals real money. If the image was stored on a free PB account the only money PB might see as income is from an ad. I'm guessing that ads being displayed to the PB account holder does not produce enough cash to pay for the used bandwidth when those are sent to forums and blogs.
If instituting that $399 annual fee drives away all those people who were freeloading PB might reduce their costs and actually make money. I doubt many users will spend $399 a year just to keep their forum images active and accessible. If somebody does that is gravy for PB.
They aren’t losing anything by doing this, except the bandwidth leaches.
Any of the other free image hosts could also cease the 3rd party linking at any time. I can think of two best case scenarios. You and I can setup our own website and use it for image storage. That would cost $100-120 a year, depending on how many images we post and how many times they are served up. The other best choice would be for forums and blogs to all have its users upload all the images to the forum or blog server. Some few forums offer that but some systems are more involved than a simple one or two clicks and you're done. Each has a downside. I f I have images stored on my server and stop paying the annual fee the images are gone. If I die and my heirs don't maintain the server the images go away too. The disadvantage of uploading to the forums own server is the massive increase in bandwidth for those images. I believe most forum owners can not support that.