> I'm not convinced it's a better experience for users either
It's a weird situation where we have vast power available on our local environments and burn it all to run JavaScript VMs to access huge server farms for functionality which in many cases was already available in local applications.
It's all about moving the software market from an owning model to a renting model. If you depend on their online service to always be around and available to you in order to access your data and get things done, they have a tighter leash on you. Not to mention that cloud apps make it that much easier to data mine usage, pander advertisements, and squeeze pennies out of users at every opportunity.
It's a weird situation where we have vast power available on our local environments and burn it all to run JavaScript VMs to access huge server farms for functionality which in many cases was already available in local applications.