They are web pages with some heroic contortions to maintain a facade of a stateful application. Web pages that connect you to useful information (and perhaps ev

They are web pages with some heroic contortions to maintain a facade of a stateful application. Web pages that connect you to useful information (and perhaps even, your useful information) are certainly very useful things. But they've never been anywhere near the power and flexibility of native apps on any platform (at the time) and never will be. In this particular case, the best email "app" on the web still struggles to match the functionality of 15 year old native applications in the same category.