Along with MobileMe’s launch came the lack of a feature that was in .Mac: Web Bookmark access.
Now, most would say that Apple’s primary excuse for gutting the feature would be that most people didn’t use it. And, I’m sure parsing sync data to display bookmarks in a web format might have taken some adaptation (not much, but some).
However, I think the main reason that Web Bookmarks was removed was in order to promote sales of Apple mobile devices (iPhone and iPod touch). Think about it, web bookmarks are to be used for when you don’t have access to your Mac. If you have one of Apple’s mobile devices on you, you don’t need the feature.
I think that this was a bad move on Apple’s part. Now, I only signed up for MobileMe for the push sync functionality… even Back to My Mac would work fine with perpetual 60 day trials. However, that was one feature I might actually have used.
Remember, in an emergency, you might want to access your bookmark library on someone else’s computer… there are many times when I have press room computer access as part of publishing duties, and having all my Safari bookmarks magically be accessible on any computer would be more than helpful. It should be considered an emergency feature, not a popular one.