The World Wide Web began to become easy to access in the mid 1990's, the promise of thin client computing has resurfaced. Some pundits have called thin client a return to terminal based computing where a central mainframe made it easier for IT divisions to maintain.
It has never really arrived.
With the announcements of the Chrome OS and their CR-48 notebook, Google is making an attempt to bring thin client to the masses.
While browser technology has improved especially with HTML5 standards, Google's thin client implementation does require access to the Internet in order to work.