2005 was a long time ago, but I think that attitude (@ 17:23 "We would be reluctant to invest in someone making desktop software", "It's ridiculous to think that your data should be on a computer... Your data should be on the network.") is unfortunate. The web is the best and worst part of the modern Internet. It is easy to develop for and in the short-term can be quite liberating, but in the long term it can do very little except make us easier to control and less likely to revolt when the operators do anything "Evil (TM)." I also think the web is a very weak and overrated platform - standards have been slow, because native experimentation has stopped. To do anything interesting, you need a native plugin. The Internet itself is ideal for communication and message passing, but the web is just one facet that excels at typesetting a dynamic book, but I can only look at so many banners.

Further more, the network exists to connect computers, not the other way around. It is not a thing on its own. There's no such thing as data that "lives" on the network. Today's cloud is just someone else's PC, somewhere else on the globe, and much less under my control, so it's not a very compelling alternative to running native software for me when it's available.