The Mother of All Footers

forumosafooter.png
For ages we have ignored the bottom or footer section of our screen designs. We bought into and never lost the notion that the only part of the screen that had any value was the first view and that anything below the fold was seldom read. For the most part that has been disproved but old habits die hard – just look at the footer section of this webblog as evidence.
In the last year or two I have seen a increasing number of sites using this part of the screen to in corporate all kinds of different data. But this example must certainly be the most “bottom heavy” or have the greatest density of data I have seen on any site to date. At approximately 950px in height it certainly is visually impressive. Outside of the obviously performance penalties, and this particular site tends to be on the slow side, I wonder what the positive or negatives of this kind of approach could be (this same wayfinding footer is on every page)? Looks like a good candidate for some testing.
Found at Forumosa.com