&gt; ... full heterogeneous application suites that run in an elaborate VM has been wonderful for users of desktop applications...<p>Since the announce of Webassembly, I have a scenario in mind. As you say, the VM can become a complete hypervisor that can can run a full OS. At that point, the browser will become useless and we could get rid of all the complexity of CSS and HTML and close that episode of internet.<p>Another point is for AI and robots, beautiful design is not a priority.