> It makes me wonder why did large companies are investing so much in web and putting web devs to write disk utility desktop apps?

It's because in these environments where corporate cancer has metastasised, programmers are not in charge of hiring programmers, or much of anything when it comes to decision-making really. HR is composed of people who are not programmers. They are looking to hire people with a list of shiny hot new web stack keywords on a resume, because they have literally no other concept of how to filter candidate applications. So they end up with a bunch of hot React devs and nobody capable of making software that is fit for task.