| The fact that web applications are so old indicates the demand for such a delivery platform. > Microsoft was so adamant on having Explorer bundled with their OS in order to establish control over the future evolution of web applications on the information highway. And they got famously burned for it in that 1999 anti-trust case. Totally. Microsoft was using it to try control the web as a Microsoft platform. Hence their push for ActiveX over flash/applets/javascript. > Vast amounts of resources have been poured into Chromium over the past two decades to bring that experience to billions. And it didn't happen out of sheer altruism on the part of Google. At the time Chrome was started it was a more or less altruistic move from Google, from the user's perspective at least. Google was heavily reliant on the web for income and existing browser were slow, had widely varying standard support, and lots of security issues. Chrome forced their hands, by showing that a web browser can be fast and "secure." Also at the time Google have a significant platform of their own. They would be at the mercy of the platform gatekeepers. So pushing an open platform that anyone can publish on was in their own interest. Since then Android has taken off and Chrome has morphed into arguable spyware, but at its inception it was a good thing for users. > Application delivery as you know it today is convenient, but that came at a price. A price to whom though. To those who would try to lock down our platforms and seek rent over application delivery? I guess I don't really care about how much it costs them ;). |