The point of the article is that a native program that was meant to do one thing (VLC, play videos, though ok the "do one thing" is a bit stretched when it come

The point of the article is that a native program that was meant to do one thing (VLC, play videos, though ok the "do one thing" is a bit stretched when it comes to a media player) needs less resources to do that thing (with thing in this case being stream a video) than a web site running inside a browser. And the reason is basically what you wrote. However the point wasn't why it happens, but to focus on that it happens - ie. native apps matter because they are (or can be) faster. BTW... > While not the case in the instance, chrome also supports background tasks while your playback is in progress. Like downloading your favorite game while watching PewDiePie reviewing it on YouTube ...this is why we have multitasking OSes. You can download your favorite game using wget (or that GOG command-line downloader or whatever) while watching PewDiePie reviewing it via VLC.