I am missing something. How is this dramatically different from passing around the data: URIs ?

data:text/html;charset=utf-8,However,%20data%20URI%20does%20the%20same%20without%20the%20server.

Here is a self-containing cached document, for simple texts probably with a better efficiency than base64.

EDIT: ah. The shorteners barf if you try to "shorten" the data URIs