The real reason is it’s a pain in the ass to deploy software in Windows. It’s not like you can easily set up a server and put some packages on and have it just automatically apt update to that. Sure there’s some “Enterprise” servers you could set up (and pay license fees for) that might work somewhat like that, but it’s easier to just make it a web app and deploy to an internet webserver.
For product distribution, you need someone download an .exe, hope a virus scanner won’t block it, maybe pay microsoft to sign it or whatever, hope the user has a compatible version of windows, and maybe they can get some working software. But then you have to make some mechanism to handle updates and hopefully that doesn’t get blocked by some security software. So it’s easier to make your software a web application.
Also putting out windows native applications means you might not be able to enshittify it later since people could continue to use the old version forever. It’s weird to assume enshittification happens accidentally, but it’s actually what some companies want to do their software because $$$. They want applications they can enshitty later, they don’t make applications that may work on linux and whoopsie it just somehow got enshittified because of that… somehow.
But many times it’s just best solution. If an application doesn’t need access to anything on my system, I’d rather it be a web app. App does the thing I need, and when I’m done, I close the tab and we’re done. Why install more software on my system if I don’t need to?
The real reason is it’s a pain in the ass to deploy software in Windows. It’s not like you can easily set up a server and put some packages on and have it just automatically apt update to that. Sure there’s some “Enterprise” servers you could set up (and pay license fees for) that might work somewhat like that, but it’s easier to just make it a web app and deploy to an internet webserver.
For product distribution, you need someone download an .exe, hope a virus scanner won’t block it, maybe pay microsoft to sign it or whatever, hope the user has a compatible version of windows, and maybe they can get some working software. But then you have to make some mechanism to handle updates and hopefully that doesn’t get blocked by some security software. So it’s easier to make your software a web application.
Also putting out windows native applications means you might not be able to enshittify it later since people could continue to use the old version forever. It’s weird to assume enshittification happens accidentally, but it’s actually what some companies want to do their software because $$$. They want applications they can enshitty later, they don’t make applications that may work on linux and whoopsie it just somehow got enshittified because of that… somehow.
But many times it’s just best solution. If an application doesn’t need access to anything on my system, I’d rather it be a web app. App does the thing I need, and when I’m done, I close the tab and we’re done. Why install more software on my system if I don’t need to?