Most of the 4.2MB of data is cacheable; only ~128KB gets re-downloaded on subsequent visits (about 100KB of which has to do with Google recaptcha). With compression, what actually gets downloaded on subsequent vists is on the order of ~60KB.
That being said, I agree that the web is bloated and needs to go on a diet. We just need to be careful on where to spend our energy for optimization (caches are great and we should rely on them).
That being said, I agree that the web is bloated and needs to go on a diet. We just need to be careful on where to spend our energy for optimization (caches are great and we should rely on them).