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> Why does every web site default to aggressively paginate their information?

Because data retrieval costs money and resources. Unbounded API responses are a susceptible to denial-of-service. Well-architected APIs will always cap the number of results they return per-call.

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Nothing needs to be "unbounded." Set the cap at 100 or 200 records instead of 10-20. Better yet, plenty of results can be cached. A custom search might require a database query, but Newegg's initial listing of MicroSD cards, graphics cards, hard drives, etc, -- queries that are fulfilled identically hundreds of times per day -- can be cached.

At which point you're not actually arguing against pagination, you're suggesting a higher page size.

I agree, page sizes are usually far too short by default! Especially when I'm on a desktop computer and a fiber connection. I think people using phones and cellular connections probably appreciate short page sizes, so it would be nice if sites had different page sizes for different clients.

Do you perhaps conflate API level pagination with display pagination?

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