It's largely used for large/fullscreen hero images on a page header with text overlaid. The easiest way to ensure required portions of the image are visible and

It's largely used for large/fullscreen hero images on a page header with text overlaid. The easiest way to ensure required portions of the image are visible and the image always fills the container, and the text placement is exact, was background image. It's a problem we can now solve in multiple ways, with object fit and also with CSS Grid. But there's some inertia on the old background image technique; it's long established and will take time to turn around.