years and years ago on a C++ forum someone made an observation that was eerily similar to yours. I still remember it to this day as it stuck in my head. They

years and years ago on a C++ forum someone made an observation that was eerily similar to yours. I still remember it to this day as it stuck in my head. They made an observation that our industry goes in cyclical centralize/de-centralize cycles and that we we were (at the time) entering into a centralization cycle. Now here I am reading a comment that we're going back into a de-centralization cycle and I wouldn't be surprised if you're the same poster. probably 15-20 years ago (maybe more?) I made a prediction that I still think will come true. The OS will become the "browser" and applications will run directly on the OS and will access local resources through standardized interfaces. WebAssembly and things like WebGL are already moving us in that direction. Honestly HTML5 was the first time I recognized standard updates as moving us towards that reality with things like localStorage, etc. I honestly think if someone more imaginative had the helm at MS when the cloud started getting big they would have eaten google's lunch by leveraging their desktop dominance into the web. Instead they dd inane things like display websites on the desktop (win98 IIRC).