The web happened. VB was great for builing stand alone desktop applications, possibly with database integration. But they never managed to deliver a similar slick and self-contained solution for building web-based solutions. It didn’t help that the migration from vb6 to vb.net was too painful, but the root cause was the demand for business desktop apps disappeared.

The infamous WebForms API was supposed to bring the same gui builder paradigm to the web, but the developer experience was not as great.