Maybe I'm just getting old, but I love bookmarks. They allow me to keep a long history of things I've found that are interesting, or useful, or otherwise important. I have hundreds of bookmarks that I may not be using right now but end up being useful years later.

To me they're completely different purposes. Tabs are short term - for whatever you're working on right now. It's like a short-term cache, a worktable to keep everything in your head right now easily accessible.

Bookmarks are long term, like a filing cabinet. You may not be using it today, but you want to hold onto it for later.

If I had to use either one for the other purpose, it would suck.

> I have hundreds of bookmarks that I may not be using right now but end up being useful years later.

I pulled up an old bookmark file that I had backed up on CD-R and pretty much every single link was dead. So at best, it was just a memory of something that I thought was worth saving at one point and might go back to someday. So more like what you said: "history of things I've found that are interesting" but not being able to use them to get the website (unless it's in Wayback Machine perhaps).

I think that we are information hoarders by nature, and that it is mentally taxing to discard something potentially useful forever.

So we file it away to relieve that mental stress. We now have the option to retrieve it should it ever become necessary, but we probably won’t.

I find the same thing to be true of note-taking and storage units.

> They allow me to keep a long history of things I've found that are interesting, or useful, or otherwise important.

Bookmarks alone don't quite do it because stuff is moved or dies. A saved copy of the webpage does do it, though, along with the bookmark. SingleFile is a godsend here. I also really like Shiori and other similar bookmark managers that snapshot the webpage along with the bookmark. Even if the saved copy is incomplete or not high-fidelity, it's often enough.