What good is an ad blocker when your child is tied to their ecosystem? They are logged in using a Google account at all time, send and receive emails at Gmail, read and save documents on Google docs, and browse the web using chrome. Google will have a pretty detailed profile on your child, including academic records.

Google tracks you across the web regardless...

Yeah, Google can now harvest people's data and build a profile on them at an earlier age!

You sing praise of Chromebook as if Google is a saint. Just because something has a Linux kernel doesn't mean it deserves to be celebrated. What good is that kernel if it is hidden under layers of nonstandard UI, or tied to cloud services designed to spy on you and monetize your personal data? It's not like the end user of a Chromebook is any better off than on Windows, just more gimped, while giving more of their data to one company.

People like you don't even know what they are championing. I mean what is the point you are trying to make? You hate Windows because it isn't open source and free, or you believe it spies on you, but you celebrate ChromeOS which is made by Google who has a worse reputation for spying than Microsoft? Who cares if the kernel is Linux if the rest of the OS is built to spy on you? And furthermore, the ChromeOS experience is nothing like the Linux desktop experience. Aside from running on the Linux kernel, the end user has zero exposure to what makes Linux, Linux!
Also why do people like you care what percent of people run Windows or Linux? It's not like more devices running the Linux kernel somehow translate to better support for the Linux desktop! I mean there are now more Android devices out there then Windows, but this has done absolutely nothing for the Linux desktop!
I could understand this "fight" for FOSS and Linux, 20 maybe even 10 years ago because the world needed more than one major OS, but times have changed, Linux isn't going anywhere and neither is Windows!

The reason why these frameworks are constantly changing or being replaced is because the browsers and web standards are constantly evolving. Right now there is a major push from big players such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft to move things towards the cloud, and as a result they are introducing more and more features to the browser. As a result of this push, a framework that was written 3 years ago with a different set of capabilities in mind, no longer makes sense.

And like I said, if for your product it doesn't make sense to adopt a new technology, you are welcome to stick with an older framework, that is why they are open source! If you need official support, then you are welcome to use one of the many commercially available frameworks from Sencha or Telerik.

You can laugh all you want, but it doesn't make my point invalid. People like you act like this is a holy war, and only you are capable of seeing the truth. Well NEWS FLASH! Web developers are not STUPID, most of us realize that on the web client development side things move fast, however, that is the nature of the business! Right now there is a lot of innovation going on in this space from lots of big players including Google, Facebook and Microsoft are pushing things towards the cloud. As a result of this push, browsers are evolving fast and a framework that was written 3 years ago with a different web standards in mind no longer make sense.

The reason why Google replaced Angular 1 with Angular 2 (which is not backward compatible) is because back when the wrote Angular 1, there was still a lot of inconsistency between the browsers and features and there was still a lot of reliance on jQuery. With browsers now incorporating a lot of what jQuery offered natively, it made sense to rewrite the framework with modern browser capabilities in mind. And this is still going on as browsers and standards are becoming more mature and browsers are adding more and more capabilities. You might want to argue that the browser is not the right platform for this, but your opinion doesn't matter, because it is the Googles of the world that decide what makes sense. Fact is development is hard, and as a developer you are constantly required to keep up to date and be open to new technologies. If you can't handle it, then maybe it is not the right profession for you.

Well Google, along with Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and millions of other web developers much smarter than you and I disagree with that view...

Polyfills are not hacks...

No one is forcing you to rewrite your application using the latest fad framework! If you wrote your app in say Angular 1 and you are happy with it, then don't rewrite it! You have access to the source after official support ends and can continue to modify it and use it for development it as long as your heart desires! That is one of the many benefits of open source isn't it? But if you want the latest, most cutting edge features, then you might want to rewrite your presentation layer using a newer framework. And like I said, there are commercials frameworks out there with extended support so you don't have to rewrite every 2 to 3 years...

At the end of the day it all comes down to trust. The question is do you trust that your browser vendor's product is reasonably secure? If you are not convinced, then like I said there are other options such as running the browser in a VM or selectively enabling Javascript in sites that you trust.

Again you are just complaining why sites don't make their content available when JS is disabled. Fact is there are no laws or standards to require the content to be accessible without JS and since people who favor browsing the web with JS disabled are in the minority, frankly most companies don't give a shit. Like I said, the only reason to complain about JS is if you are paranoid about security, at which point either trust the browser, or run it in a VM.

If you are using web standards, chances are your app will work across all modern browsers. I haven't had to do any browser specific hacks in a long time! Also with the browser, you can target any platform that supports a modern browser, no need to compile your app for multiple platforms, provide installation instructions for each platform, have to deal with platform specific differences on each OS. And no native is does not have superior tooling, with native you have to either wrap all platform specific calls in a function, or use some 3rd party solution like QT (which has it's own problems). Then you have capability differences between each platform to worry about. Let's face it, not everything needs to move to the browser; leave CAD, Photoshop, 3D Max, etc where they are. But for certain applications where there is a server side component to it, the browser makes more sense!

If you application is well written and there is a good separation of business logic from the UI, then 2 to 3 year lifespan for a framework is pretty good. There are also commercial solutions out there that provide frameworks with greater support, for example Ext JS. It all depends what you are doing, but chances are that as a business your product is constantly evolving, and you also want your product to evolve with the technology, otherwise, your product will feel outdated and stale. Also, I don't know why you are having such a difficult time with NPM, I use many packages on daily bases and have had very little problems.

Try making a compelling reason to the management that they need to hire a team of say 2 developers, a project manager, and a QA just to build and maintain an in house JS framework, when there is a plethora of frameworks out there! Large corporations like to focus on areas that is relevant to their business, and for most building an in house JS framework is not relevant. Facebook and Google do it because they are sufficiently large, and they are in the business of platform as a service, so they provide tools and frameworks to attract developers to their platforms. They are also on top of the food chain so they are big enough that they need to invent solutions to their unique problems, because they are constantly trying to push technology forward.