But it has. The incredible adoption of javascript and web and web applications has shown the power of platform agnosticism and many applications have been re-written to take advantage of that. The HTML5 spec and coming NaCl will accelerate this trend, especially considering that traditional tools do not have to be foregone, and the capabilities are far greater.

For example: The Unity3D Lego Star Wars game was ported to NaCl to be delivered as a 'web app' in a matter of days. This implies, universal compatibility, no barriers to entry, and an extremely flexible development pipeline. Best of all, there are next to no compromises in performance or capability.

I am excited, you are right! I am also somewhat pragmatic in my predictions, and they are not made lightly: certainly without impunity to my credibility. I also tend not to deal in absolutes, and as such I don't think that local software will disappear overnight. I *do* think, however, that developers will have a new venue to maximize their audience with little or no changes to their development patterns (an enticing characteristic) which will be quite popular among them. I expect many developers will willingly fall prey to this new technology.

I also don't think that all of this tech will be 'web' based service. I strongly expect that there will be projects around these standards that open a new avenue for local programs while still providing platform agnosticism! Like you, I think that this is a good thing.

Just curious: What do you mean by 'the end of general purpose computing?'