On the contrary, Apple's and Google's app stores have ENCOURAGED tinkerers and self-publishers. There are so many more people who were inspired to become developers as soon as these devices hit mainstream. I was one of them. I would have never got into programming if I didn't know that I had the chance to develop an experience that millions of people can actually FIND and use in novel ways.

Huh? The web is exactly what you are talking about. Google and Bing are things. Search on the web works and it's not very hard to get a decently ranking page on them.

There's two points to this:

The first technical: When you search for something in Google or Bing you are being surfaced information related to your keywords. Whether that would be an article, a web app, a blog...etc When you search for an App, you are being surfaced an application to solve a certain task.

The second is behavioral: We have conditioned ourselves to use Google to find an answer to our question. In that case, Google is an app we use to find answers to our questions. We have also conditioned ourselves to use the App Store as the gateway to find a certain experience for our smartphone. The average consumer can't differentiate between a web app or a native app, they just know that in order to get an experience on their smartphones the app store is the place to do it.

I rarely see mobile developers worried about the browsers marketshare as the client for applications. If we're to be brutally honest Web developers don't want their skill set to be marginalized, I get that however I say use the best tool for the job, if the experience is better served on a native app then it should be native. I personally don't see a future where either web or native controls all of the market and that's a great thing, don't fight over the pie, make a bigger pie!

Bravo.