One way I see to move this forward in websites at scale is to run a test where you find out the percentage of hovers that result in a click. Suppose its 90% - that means that 10% of those hovers result in fruitless busy-work for your server. Multiply bandwidth + server cost by 10%, and compare that amount to the amount you'd be willing to pay for near-instant load times.
For many companies (Facebook, Twitter, etc) the desire for instant user gratification is paramount, so the push toward instant browsing experience is a very real possibility. One problem is that most people wouldn't really notice, because these websites load pretty quickly as it is.
One interesting direction is if there was some kind of AI in the background that knows what pages you're likely to visit and preloads them - Facebook stalking victims would become an instantclick away.
For many companies (Facebook, Twitter, etc) the desire for instant user gratification is paramount, so the push toward instant browsing experience is a very real possibility. One problem is that most people wouldn't really notice, because these websites load pretty quickly as it is.
One interesting direction is if there was some kind of AI in the background that knows what pages you're likely to visit and preloads them - Facebook stalking victims would become an instantclick away.