I'm probably a bit older than you, and when I saw the first interactive web things coming along, I thought "Uh oh... This is the mainframe-terminal model coming back to haunt us".

You may not remember this, but the PC revolution basically freed us from the shackles of big computer companies dictating who could do what and at what price, and BOFHs thinking they were gods because they had absolute power of everything anyone could do on "their" systems. Suddenly ordinary people had their own computers at home, installed (or programmed themselves) the software they wanted and gave IBMs and the likes a giant middle finger.

But at some point in the early 2000's, the giant companies figured out a way to get control back through "Web 2.0": they sold it as a convenience and people bought it. But the ultimate goal was to claw back control. The corporations had found a way to subvert HTML, which was just a document model thing, into a framework to relocate part - and now, all - of the computing back onto their mainframes.

I've been saying this for 20 years. And now here we are, running things like CAD programs, word prcessors and spreadsheets over the internet, with the software vendors essentially free to do whatever the hell they want once more. The mind boggles...

I guess people only learn from the past when they get old enough to remember it, and too old to do anything about it...