What we're really seeing is just small increments of introducing the basic UNIX functionality of the internet to unskilled users.
This is nothing new. What's new is that there are a lot more people connected and willing to use the web now. And their computing devices have ample power. And they have an installed version of UNIX. The network is growing continously. And we're still not done yet. It will grow more.
The formula for these startups is simple: Take something simple that nerds have long known how to do, using UNIX, e.g., share a photo, and make it so easy that anyone can do it. This made sense in the past, when few people had running copies of UNIX.
What is CGI? It's letting someone use UNIX utilities, or use a scripting language interpreter running on UNIX, who cannot run those utilities or that interpreter herself. (Not counting all those Windows servers.) Today it amounts to telling someone to use the web and CGI to run a script on a server somewhere that she could just as easily run on her own machine. A lot of the data that is kept on servers somewhere else could be stored on the user's local machine. Instead users are trying to figure out how to use all this extra space. So they fill it with music and movies. Then we tell them they should put that stuff in the cloud. With storage costs what they are, users can purchase enough external hard drive storage space to store their whole digital life. But they're being told to give their data to someone else.
We could just teach them how to run the UNIX utilities on their own machine. Or teach them how to use scripting languages to do basic tasks.
But we don't. We think of everything in terms of client and server. Even when every user is holding the power of a server, powerful enough to serve her needs, in he palm of her hand.
At some point, we'll reach the point of "self-service". Because it does not make sense with the computing power we now have to keep letting someone else do everything that could be simply done by users using their own devices. This not 1980, or 1990, or even 2000. An enormous number of people are using UNIX (via OSX or Android, for example) and they don't even realize it.
There is a place for "the cloud" and big jobs, but for most users, like the ones on Facebook, they can accomplish most things without having to use a server in some datacenter somewhere.
And this is more cost-effective. And if more people knew how to use the underlying UNIX system they now have on their laptops, tablets and smartphones, we could see huge advancements in their productivity.
Instead we're still trying to keep them hooked on using someone else's servers to do really simple things, so we can manipulate them and try to make money in subtle ways, indirect ways. We don't just charge fees for use, because we know we'd be undersold. Everything is "free", to the frustration of some would-be enterpisers. And why is that? Because the cost to provide these "services" is near zero. Someone else who knows UNIX can do the same thing. Even more, today the user could do it themselves with just a bit of know-how.
Stop trying to manipulate users and let progress proceed. Let them use the full power of the devices they have purchased.