Many use cases remain (and will remain for a long time) where having a network-based application is not practical. This doesn't even necessarily depend much on

Many use cases remain (and will remain for a long time) where having a network-based application is not practical. This doesn't even necessarily depend much on technological advances, as it does on geographical and social factors. Examples: * I sit on a train that goes through valleys and tunnels - there is simply no reception (not even cell) of any kind in those areas in most cases. * I keep all my data online in Google apps, but I get locked out of my account (as reported a few weeks ago on HN). * I have huge amounts of data (HD video), my uplink sucks and will suck for a long time. It sucks even more when I travel. * I'm in China and access a European site, which is routed through North America - I get at least half a second of latency on every request. Ouch. If you ask me, I see the trend going more towards smaller devices and improved online-offline capabilities. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point you could "download" (or call it "permanently cache") google docs' actual software at and use it completely offline, with a convenient auto-update and remote data syncing option. (Evernote might be an example of "the future"). The ideal situation for most users is to have their data (and accessing software) available locally and remotely.