Also important to mention is fun. The browser allows people to make fun stuff, be it a video game (using webGL) or a multiplayer instrument (using Web Audio API

Also important to mention is fun. The browser allows people to make fun stuff, be it a video game (using webGL) or a multiplayer instrument (using Web Audio API), and distribute it really easily. These API are well documented and are available to anyone to write and share. Thanks to the proliferation of web APIs you often don’t even need a server to make cool stuff and share with your friends. If you have to create an executable for your fun little project, and make sure your friends have all the dependencies, and then your friends that have only Macs or Iphones won’t be able to use it because you don’t know how to share it with them, you might not bother making that thing in the first place, and the world becomes so much poorer as a result. The web with it’s many features and API is really democratizing how we make fun interactive stuff and share it with each other. Most days there is a fun project that serves no purpose except to entertain strangers that makes it to the front page of HN. How many of those would still be made and shared if browsers would be as feature poor as the OP wants.