I'd dare say it's already happened on the desktop. I do IT for an elementary school, and pretty much none of the employees use any app other than their web browser. Right now the computer I'm sitting in front of is running Outlook, our ticketing system, WhatsApp, Discord, and Spotify all within Firefox which is the only native app I have open, and likely the only app I'll open all day.
certainly some are more ahead than others, but it proves the trend. if only the webbrowser had a better way to manage the apps. a desktop of sorts.
i do realize that we are reinventing everything here. and as some said elsewhere, html is not the best of tools to create user interfaces. not by a long shot[1]. but the dream of a single unified architecture that we can all develop towards may at last become a reality.
[1] actually, thanks to things like canvas or webassembly we are not necessarily stuck with html. we'll be able to create gui toolkits in javascript (hey, js-framework developers, here is your next target: the js-gui-toolkit of the week ;-) or maybe even port existing toolkits to webassembly and then our gnome or windows apps will simply run inside the browser instead.
the day of the linux desktop (for those that are still waiting for it) will be the day of the browser desktop
I'd dare say it's already happened on the desktop. I do IT for an elementary school, and pretty much none of the employees use any app other than their web browser. Right now the computer I'm sitting in front of is running Outlook, our ticketing system, WhatsApp, Discord, and Spotify all within Firefox which is the only native app I have open, and likely the only app I'll open all day.