It's basically cause of mobile. Simple tools often involve using files. Using plain text files too. I don't think the pendulum will swing back the same. Files are a bad abstraction. Databases via HTTP APIs are far more reliable for using between all our devices. Syncing files without something like Git is very painful and for Git to be used the user themselves need to be able to handle the diff themselves correctly. And they'd need to do this all on Mobile. It basically kills plain files for anyone except the most advanced users and requires very complicated apps (e.g. the wonderful WorkingCopy on iOS). The problem yet to be solved for normal users is how do you take advantage of that convenience while still letting users own their data?

There are some attempts but basically at the end of the day it'll require more support from the various operating systems (mainly mobile). There needs to be some underlying open data format which can be synced easily that recreates a database locally that apps can query directly and optionally some way to proxy those requests to a central service when the device can't/shouldn't have direct access to that database (lack of storage, lack of compute to run the database or app, lack of privilege's to have possible direct access all of the data.)

If you can't solve encryption, syncing, and ability to easily use the same rich data between devices and operating systems you won't reverse the trends to move everything to these fancy tools which almost all end up being centralized and requiring the user to be online regularly even for data which only their own devices would ever be using.