I think it's pretty clear that that is NOT the reason why <img> still exists. Otherwise, why not just discourage its use in favour of <object> while still retai

I think it's pretty clear that that is NOT the reason why <img> still exists. Otherwise, why not just discourage its use in favour of <object> while still retaining it for compatibility? But actually the opposite is true, <img> is encouraged because it is more semantically descriptive and provides image-specific features that couldn't reasonably be added to <object>. If this line of thinking actually matched what the W3C believed, then how can you explain the addition of ANY of the new tags, for example, in the HTML 5 specification, since we already have the most general cases covered with things like <object> and <div>? Following this to its logical conclusion, why not deprecate EVERY tag except those? Why have tags at all?