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> Tabs are just links. Why do you have to keep them open? Can't you just bookmark them ?

I use both tabs and bookmarks and they serve different purposes:

- tabs are ephemeral and not meant to be saved. Saving them as bookmarks adds friction because it leads to "managing" them later in bookmarks UI to find+reload+delete them. Using multiple tabs avoids digital housekeeping work. Bookmarks are more useful if the url is "promoted" to reference status (e.g. like the weather page being bookmarked.) as a frequent shortcut.

- tabs already have the HTML downloaded and visually pre-rendered. Can quickly cycle through them like flipping through tv channels. Bookmarks are only text of page titles.

I often have about 50+ tabs open and I deliberately do not want to bookmark most of them.

On the other hand, if people are using tabs exactly as they would use bookmarks, maybe that's an anti-pattern because now the web browser is consuming gigabytes of RAM for a hundred tabs that should be bookmarked and closed to save resources.

> it leads to "managing" them later in bookmarks UI to find+reload+delete them

I agree. There is definitely less UX friction with tabs, and I can live with 20-30 (50 maaax) and only some of the time. But 100 ephemeral and much more? most of the time? IMO this is just unwillingness to improve the system. You can definitely get less friction dealing with most of them as organized bookmarks than wild tabs.

> tabs already have the HTML downloaded and visually pre-rendered

Most new browsers purge tabs from memory, so the instantaneity is not there anymore.

I thought this way at first, but I'm discovering the value of opening tabs and coming back to them later, as I'm reading. I try to stay focused on what I'm reading without following links, so a middle-click and move on. Then I come back to the links and skim what I'm interested in. Sometimes this leads to 20 tabs being opened from a single site. And I don't have time to do it all in one sitting so I leave them there and come back to it. Thankfully tab suspend is a thing.
What I personally do is, I use the "bookmark all tabs" to a folder feature, then I open them (together or one by one) from the new chrome side panel.
YFG is probably aware that that pushing tabs off to the side for later consumption can be a big help in maintaining focus and spending screen time efficiently. And it's OK if you don't get to all of them - what a nice problem to have!