Not a Googler, but I've done many projects in both Canvas and HTML/CSS/JS.
Canvas is actually really hard to get right. You basically are given these super basic tools and have to go do everything yourself. With HTML and CSS you're standing on the shoulders of giants. With Canvas you're drawing arcs and squares and lines.
That being said, canvas is the kind of thing if you DO get it right, it's awesome. It's just fast. And really portable: every platform supports a canvas of some kind, and the primitives tend to be really similar.
Canvas is actually really hard to get right. You basically are given these super basic tools and have to go do everything yourself. With HTML and CSS you're standing on the shoulders of giants. With Canvas you're drawing arcs and squares and lines.
That being said, canvas is the kind of thing if you DO get it right, it's awesome. It's just fast. And really portable: every platform supports a canvas of some kind, and the primitives tend to be really similar.