Sun with Java and Java applets wanted to be that. Maybe Flash and Flew dreamed of that too.

Browsers were said to render the OS irrelevant and in a way Chromebooks come close to that.

We were also supposed to not owned & store any software locally and rent & download everything. Office Online, Creative clood are there.

But things are rarely that radical and the web was there and opened. I prefer desktop apps (and I'm a web developer !) but how can you beat the ability to login to any of your web tool from any computer ?