Simple answer: People didn't use computers or phones to do most things. They'd pick up the phone and talk to a human, or they'd go to the physical store, and talk to a human.

Nothing wrong with that, but app stores, among other things, made computers far more accessible for non technical people, to do things like shop from their couch without talking to anyone.

We had people install a thing from whichever site they found, often with a toxic payload because third-party sites gamed results to end up above a company, or via sites that started trusted but were taken over by scamware, and then never updated anything, falling prey to whatever virii were doing the rounds.