For starters, a binary blob on your computer can be prevented from "phoning home" to collect personal data much more effectively than a web app can. Additionally, the vendor is often forced to compete with their own old software because they can't always force you to run the newest binary blob. This prevents the wholesale loss of features from products you rely on at the whim of the vendor.
>
For starters, a binary blob on your computer can be prevented from "phoning home" to collect personal data much more effectively than a web app can.
In theory, it can be. In practice, the average user doesn't do a damn thing to do so, and installing a random native blob from the internet is far more dangerous than a webapp running in a browser sandbox.
> Additionally, the vendor is often forced to compete with their own old software because they can't always force you to run the newest binary blob.
This is also how we get people running years-old software instead of deploying security patches.
I understand that a power user may prefer these trade-offs. Most users are not power users.
Surely, you realize that docs needs to be connected to a server in order to perform it's basic use case of collaborative editing... Right?
You must also realize that an arbitrary native blob can and will happily connect out to whatever server it's authors want it to.
I can't say that 'there are a few techies who aren't happy that Google doesn't ship docs as a native application' is a very compelling reason for Google to try to change core web standards.
For starters, a binary blob on your computer can be prevented from "phoning home" to collect personal data much more effectively than a web app can. Additionally, the vendor is often forced to compete with their own old software because they can't always force you to run the newest binary blob. This prevents the wholesale loss of features from products you rely on at the whim of the vendor.