Except that isn't really why it happened: iot being Internet tied is because it's much, much easier to get devices to work when you control at least one side of the server with skilled professionals rather then your average home user.

And no one has really come up with an alternative: home assistant is good, but it's not for the non-techy.

I will squarely blame IPv4 for some of this: NAT has meant that the key application people might want to use is broken by default (remote device access) without mediation servers.