For the general population, is this a bad thing? - less friction for users

- less hassle dealing with installer bloat

- ability to just “close” a webpage instead of having to remove many files in obscure locations if you want to uninstall something

- easier syncing of state across multiple devices with browser session sync

- granular permissions per “app” such as file access, camera access, etc. - lower barrier to enter for developers wanting to ship cross-platform software without having to bundle electron / tauri / whatever

Not to say there aren’t downsides.

- no longer “owning” your software (although debatable if this were ever the case)

- potentially being tied into vendor-specific browser implementations

Emacs have a similar story to tell. Effectively, the browser is nowadays an Operating System running a VM. The computer history is having these kind of OS models for 50+ years now.

The real problem is more that bad and malicious code get more and more easier to deploy, the browser getting more complex to mitigate this.

The good news is that the level of trust in the code to run app natively is very high, and in the age of highly connected computers, if not done in the browser, it would have been needed at OS level anyway.

So maybe browser looks like a sad future as an OS replacement, but at least, it collected issues and solutions to mitigate arbitrary code loaded from the networks.

Whatever happens after, this history will be kept. (it has already started on current OSes with sandboxed software and on demand permissions).

Adding broadly useful features to the web platform is a net gain if it removes bloat from N web apps that most users run.

It might take multiple years for something like WebGPU to start paying off, and even longer for the deprecation of older APIs for 3D rendering, video compression and compute.

Except for being less capable.

WebGL 2.0 is basically a PS3 / XBox 360 kind of graphics, and WebGPU would be PS4, and that is about it.

All the other cool things, Mesh Shaders, Ray Tracing, Nanite... forget about it, with luck in the next 10 years, if it follows WebGL 2.0 improvements rate.