Techniques are described for optimizing the use of computing resources in connection with providing online services. A user interface (UI) executes in the cloud and is streamed as video to a client device. When the user navigates away from the UI, the connection between the client and the computing resource is terminated and the resource is placed back in the pool. The most recent state of the UI is retained so that when the user navigates back to the UI, a new resource is allocated and the UI begins executing at or near the point where the user last interacted with the UI.