&quot;These people have forgotten that all application interfaces ... used to be “richer environments,” and the users abandoned them by the millions, in favor of the browser, the moment they got a chance&quot;<p>And then they abandoned the web browser in even larger numbers to download &quot;apps,&quot; which provided a richer environment to interact with their portable personal computer (or &quot;smartphone&quot;).<p>Web browsers absolutely suck for UI, and they&#x27;re not redeemed by their lack of complexity.  When there is a easy, viable, alternative to a web browser for a program to run on users&#x27;s computers you&#x27;ll see browsers dropped, and hopefully go back to what they were intended for - browsing interlinked documents.