I would like to see an alternative to the WWW altogether. WWW is no longer a collection of hyperlinked documents, which was its initial purpose but a multitude of technologies running on browsers that use HTTP in nonstandard ways because it's ubiquitous. HTML is getting obsolete, with the most popular websites being essentially javascript apps. Maybe it's time for a new system like Java to create cross platform GUI apps from the cloud, that is not constrained by the browser and HTTP's limitations.
I believe the most popular website is essentially an interface for this collection of hyperlinked documents. Document browsing is still one of the killer features of web.
HTML is not a bad layout engine for GUI apps. It may not have been initially been designed as one, but after 15 years of development it seems to be pretty pleasant to work with as there are people who want to build their desktop apps with HTML.
Obviously, the standard request-response model of HTTP is limiting for interactive apps. Bi-directional communication within request isn't possible and handshaking is a bit too expensive. But hey, this problem is actually solved: http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/.
