“there's no financial gain for any company in the current chain [...] to turn the Internet inside out like that”

Fortunately, this is still a realm driven by more sources of innovation than money.

The real problem I see is the users [read: all of us] (who, I'll admit, it's all too easy to point fingers at). The software isn't moving towards self-centralisation (coinage!) because it did a long time ago, albeit a bit ahead of it's time. We've had thin clients for decades; they just need some serious improvements to be usable over non-local networks.

But I can't talk, I have 2 VPSes and a 50/25 home connection with no inbound ports blocked, yet I'm using gmail, google drive, etc.