Well, there are a number of “selling points” to electron/NW.JS or similar: reuse JS code/skills/libraries (npm) to build desktop apps; use Node.JS to build desktop apps; cross-platform. It clearly lowered the barrier and from a company’s perspective front-end talent’s “reach” is expanded.

Even way before they came out I wondered why more native apps didn’t just reuse HTML/CSS at least (many did).

Of course we all know of the downsides of Electron (basically Chromium + An App in every app; ridiculously heavy-weight.

I’m fond of the webview project and Tauri, being built on top of it. It reuses the available system browser view and doesn’t bundle Node, so it’s very light.