> Somewhat shady and full of ads - apps are worse in this regard, IMO. They also ask for access to your location, and all sort of other data access web sites don't have.
I disagree with that - App stores will reject many apps but search engines will happily index most shady websites as long as they don't serve obvious malware or try "black hat SEO". Websites can also ask for your location, store a multitude of tracking info (cookies, Flash cookies, local storage...) and while they cannot access contacts, SMS and similar information, they can get very sensitive information though phishing and possibly from browser history.
> Cross-platform web development has never really be that easy.
We could stick to the lowest common denominator (which is still simple HTML apparently), but people would complain about the obsolete UI.
I disagree with that - App stores will reject many apps but search engines will happily index most shady websites as long as they don't serve obvious malware or try "black hat SEO". Websites can also ask for your location, store a multitude of tracking info (cookies, Flash cookies, local storage...) and while they cannot access contacts, SMS and similar information, they can get very sensitive information though phishing and possibly from browser history.
> Cross-platform web development has never really be that easy.
We could stick to the lowest common denominator (which is still simple HTML apparently), but people would complain about the obsolete UI.