[narag]

I do believe a browser app can do pretty much the same as a native one, but I agree that the important bit is they didn't see the big picture: mostly free tech, no installation, safer, low mantainance, out-of-the-box truly client server, etc.

Actually the web now is 100X more beautiful and responsive than at that time. I mean what you can do with an intranet server, not the radioactive media monstrosities.

Not really a spreadsheet person, I can believe Excel is better than Sheets. But is web vs native the reason?

[unishark]

There's browser-based versions of excel and probably every other component in office. It's always clunkier in my opinion, and loses some features or other depending on what it is. The added layer of security also adds annoyances (like getting constantly kicked out after a period of inactivity) and new bugs.

To the user I'd say it's a trade-off that gains you little or nothing and loses a lot over native apps. The benefits of switching to browser and cloud based apps go to the organization you work for the and software companies selling the products.

[judge2020]

The web is the ultimate "just write code" platform there ever was, literally everything that's not your PWA and API is handled by someone else in the chain.