Thing is, those performance issues matter. In user interfaces, they mean a lot. And they&#x27;re also important when you&#x27;re trying to do <i>actual work</i>. I&#x27;m yet to see a web app that wouldn&#x27;t choke on the amount of data a power user may need. Yes, that includes Google&#x27;s office suite, which is so horribly laggy when you put more than a screenfull of content into it that the very experience justifies switching to Windows and buying Microsoft Office.<p>What we would need, if the browser is to become a platform for actual productivity tools and not shiny toys, is a decent persistent storage interface - one that would be controlled by users, not by applications, and that could be browsed, monitored. And most importantly, one that would be reliable. And then, on top of that, a stronger split between what&#x27;s on-line and what&#x27;s off-line. Because some data and some tasks should really <i>not</i> be done through a network.