>How is it different than installing 3rd party software on your OS?
The whole act of downloading and installing?
For desktop apps, you have to do that.
For webapps, you just have to visit a page (or even not, thanks to XSS).
And while we install 2-5 or maybe 20 apps per year (at most, some don't install anything after they get their PCs), we visit 100s of pages each day, and 1000s each month.
Also, while we can realistically restrict our app downloads to legitimate sources (the App Store, the product's webpage etc), we read stuff from all over the place -- that's what links are there for.
The whole act of downloading and installing?
For desktop apps, you have to do that.
For webapps, you just have to visit a page (or even not, thanks to XSS).
And while we install 2-5 or maybe 20 apps per year (at most, some don't install anything after they get their PCs), we visit 100s of pages each day, and 1000s each month.
Also, while we can realistically restrict our app downloads to legitimate sources (the App Store, the product's webpage etc), we read stuff from all over the place -- that's what links are there for.