• complete control over hardware.


• automatic centralised updates (no bulky bug-ridden pr-driven version updates set to unproductive deadlines).


• bug-fixes immediately commited to code.


• close contact with user-base (organic growth of features).


• cross-browser issues minimal compared to cross-platform issues.


• leveraging central data store (social/collaborative software by default).


• Availability of usage statistics (access patterns etc) to inform development (easily spot which areas of your app need optimisation, which features are popular/underused and which interfaces need improvement).


• rapid development frameworks in high-level scripting languages means agility (Ruby on Rails / PHP5 / Python / Perl) so you can just try stuff out. If it isn't working out you'll spot it immediately from usage stats/feedback.


• proven scalable ('shared nothing') architectures.


• your users need have no technical knowledge whatsoever, other than how to operate a browser. Your user's desktop environment can't influence your software in any way, so technical support is restricted to browser issues.

That said, if you're building a graphic intensive arcade game then KHTML may not be your rendering engine of choice ;)