[9rx]

> Ultimately your cloud functions reach out to your database, that is centrally located...

A big difference is that your code running in the datacenter should always be well connected to the network. The user running your code out in the middle of nowhere teetering on the edge of available mobile coverage... Not so much. SSR means the user can begin after one round trip instead of, at bare minimum, two (and more realistically at least three – HTML, JavaScript, and data), which becomes significant as latency rises.

Although I would agree that the cases where you actually need that are not as common as we like to think, and even where justified a lot of developers are bound to screw it up such that the app isn't usable without multiple round-trips anyway. It is certainly something you should think long and hard about. It is not tradeoff-free.