Sad state? Not at all. I guess it all depends on the type of coder that you are. Let's say you need a theme/gui for your app. Plan A: get a bootstrap theme, tested, reliable, responsive, modern, etc. You'll be getting a ton of code/features of which you'll probably just need 5%. Plan B: get something ultra simple that gives you structure and add stuff as you need it, something that maybe has grids, buttons and forms (maybe something you even code yourself like I normally do). Backbone is like that: just the structure (hence the name!) with a couple of commonly used features. Angular/React/Ember are like the bootstrap theme. I personally like to have full control of what is added to my code.<p>Regarding Google Trends, if a framework has big (huge) money behind, it will most likely be more searched-for, sponsored, events held, conferences, hackatons, etc.<p>Finally, once you set to learn and use a stable tech, you will be profiting from it for a long time. I still have a couple of apps running classic ASP! With JS frameworks I think we can safely assume it will be even longer.