Why is hotlinking bad? It leeches bandwidth. Which can cost the actual host of the picture money. Also, since it's on their server, they control the image you're using. Meaning if they move it, delete it, etc., it's gone. They can also change it if they want to. It happened to a Cracked article once, I think, which was pretty funny. Any server that hosts images should be prepared for hotlinking. @Star: Chrome uses separate processes per tab, that's why you see multiples in the task manager. I haven't found it uses nearly as much as firefox.