sometimes well over a decade ago.

Sometimes before I was born, that'd be 3 decades ago.

Networked collaborative office applications were a thing before 1995, BTW. Networks were not quite up to the task, but the rest was there.

Famous things like Word, Photoshop, AutoCAD and even raytracers were already feature-complete (by the computing ability of that time).

The Web (not the current one, but the hand-edited HTML pages by amateurs, Perl scripts as CGI, web rings and directories one) was the main new revolutionary thing in those, as you might have noticed, it's also the very thing they are trying to destroy from all angles.

The overarching problem is that people who want you to buy things you don't need and not buy things you need from someone else and not tell them to go to hell are able to push regulations and standards in their favor. They are joined by power-hungry people in governments in that.

All that is tangential to personal computers. A personal computer is a very powerful concept, especially with the Web (as it existed), and there are people trying to dilute and disperse and destroy that.

It's all similar to printing press, mass media, widespread literacy, freedom of speech, all these things. A very important thing to protect.