It's kinda ironic that this is how every platform since Windows has died.
A major factor that pushed users away from Windows and towards webapps was the constant onslaught of viruses and worms. It got so bad that when I was in college (early 2000s), SQL Slammer would be perpetually floating around the college network (I noticed at least 4-5 computers infected in my dorm of 22 residents), and a significant portion of peoples' fileshares were infected with Nimda. The assumption was that if you had ever logged into a computer in administrator mode (and oftentimes, even if you hadn't), it was compromised.
And then desktop e-mail clients died under the onslaught of spam. GMail's spam filters basically saved e-mail (temporarily at least; people hate it again), and they could only be done on the server, with data from lots of people.
Then a major factor in the shift from web to mobile was the huge weight of advertising, clickbait, phishing, and other abuse. Webpages got so heavy and bloated that the clean, fast interface of a mobile app was a huge breath of fresh air.
Now we've got mobile, dying under the weight of apps that request every privilege under the sun so they can do things they shouldn't be able to. And Google, dying under the weight of SEO & content farms.
It's like the tech industry periodically gets reborn because as soon as something gets popular, people swoop in to abuse it, until it's easier to kill the patient and start over with a new platform than to clean up the mess. Full employment for entrepreneurs, I guess.
It is a social problem, there is a saying, "Humans are like pigeons, alone and in small groups they are elegant and nice, together in large group they are obnoxious and leave huge piles of corroding shit".
I guess the wild west of the web played out in the worst way possible. Because just like with the wild west, the bandits can outrun the lawman by slipping across borders.
A major factor that pushed users away from Windows and towards webapps was the constant onslaught of viruses and worms. It got so bad that when I was in college (early 2000s), SQL Slammer would be perpetually floating around the college network (I noticed at least 4-5 computers infected in my dorm of 22 residents), and a significant portion of peoples' fileshares were infected with Nimda. The assumption was that if you had ever logged into a computer in administrator mode (and oftentimes, even if you hadn't), it was compromised.
And then desktop e-mail clients died under the onslaught of spam. GMail's spam filters basically saved e-mail (temporarily at least; people hate it again), and they could only be done on the server, with data from lots of people.
Then a major factor in the shift from web to mobile was the huge weight of advertising, clickbait, phishing, and other abuse. Webpages got so heavy and bloated that the clean, fast interface of a mobile app was a huge breath of fresh air.
Now we've got mobile, dying under the weight of apps that request every privilege under the sun so they can do things they shouldn't be able to. And Google, dying under the weight of SEO & content farms.
It's like the tech industry periodically gets reborn because as soon as something gets popular, people swoop in to abuse it, until it's easier to kill the patient and start over with a new platform than to clean up the mess. Full employment for entrepreneurs, I guess.