>The web is the only open platform we have ever had and probably will ever have.

Are you trying to make some sort of joke here? How is the Web more open than Linux or the BSDs running FOSS applications? And in fact how is the web under Chrome any more open than macOS or Windows? Seriously. In all cases, you can't just freely modify everything about the platform you're running on top of or most of the "applications" you're running. There's a megacorp behind each whose interests may or may not align with yours. You don't get to choose what they do or how. But you can still make whatever you'd like on top for no cost, though you may have to spend money to get attention. And if you make something malicious, you might get added to a blacklist that is distributed to all users. Etc.

In essence Google wants our "operating system" to be Chrome or another of their properties, either as a sort of meta-OS layered on top of the hardware OS or more directly via Chrome OS/Android+Google Play Services. And their financial interest in that is almost exclusively to get data about us to run ads at us, and to the extent possible prevent or hinder avoidance of that harvest or those ads.

It's not just that I don't want an ad company to make my operating system, I don't want an internet-required OS at all. And I want a wide variety of software with zero WAN dependency beyond maybe initial delivery somewhere in the chain. If that's not something you're interested in fine, but lots of us will remain willing to put our money where our mouths are on that one.

I also disagree that Safari is "holding the web back" because I like simple, readable and parseable websites.

You're conflating two issues. Chromium's dominance is a problem for sure, but that is separate from the web being an open platform. The web is more open than Linux (which I use btw) because a web app can run on Linux, MacOS, Windows, FreeBSD, Android, iOS and more without recompiling, redistributing or re-anything. Would it be nice if it wasn't HTML/JS/CSS based? Absolutely. But we gotta take what we can get.

I couldn't agree more that Google's dominance in web technology is a problem. But you're throwing the baby out with the bath water.

And just to add, the current situation is still better than proprietary native apps on MacOS and Windows. I can at least use Chromium in many forms and on virtually any operating system. Not ideal, but the alternative people in this thread are suggesting is far worse.

Works for simple web apps, but for anything complex you are going to run into performance and especially UI issues. (Maybe also being limited to HTTP(S) can be an issue?)

There has been a ton of work to address all of that such as web assembly, webgl, webgpu, webworkers, websockets, http2, sse, on and on. There's a lot of web tech out there (for better or for worse). You really can make a webapp that's just as feature rich, complex and performant as a native app these days. Still tons of work to be done though, web assembly in particular needs some additional features before it can really shine.

In theory you can, but it's a mindset of "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail", happily pushed by Google trying to wrestle control over people's computers from Microsoft.

Yeah I agree with that. But Apple has an app store hammer, and Microsoft has a Windows hammer too. Of all the hammers, I feel Google's is the least evil of them all. They're all really bad, the state of technology today is er ... something. But at least with the web, I maintain hardware freedom and really the most freedom overall.

Is it really the least evil ?

There's a wide panoply of programming languages that can be used on Windows PCs, including specifically to make user interfaces, which are cross-platform, like Qt.