It's not really the web browser that enabled it. Web browsers have been around for a very very long time. Instead, it's two big recent changes: 1. The relativ

It's not really the web browser that enabled it. Web browsers have been around for a very very long time. Instead, it's two big recent changes: 1. The relative ease at which application developers can build globally scalable infrastructure via Cloud PaaS. 2. More computers can depend on always-connected internet access. Also worth mentioning: Users also had a strong preference for apps that performed like native apps, which made using cross-platform toolkits less appealing (still exists when building mobile apps). Apple Mac's didn't switch over from power pc to x86 until ~2006, which meant only large companies could support code bases for both, Windows and OSX. Linux had a number of competing distributions, and expertise on how to deliver linux software to customers wasn't common knowledge.