Offline Web App vs. Online Desktop App

I must comment that the conclusion they arrive at is very interesting: that web-based apps work better for individuals (and also, I presume, small groups), while desktop apps work better for businesses, because a big part of people's justification for web applications is large-scale collaboration.

In the article, however, John Milan makes it seem like it's impossible to integrate a web app with a business infrastructure. I don't think that this is a necessary property of web applications. The problem is that most web applications now are ad-based, and they want their consumers' only access point to be through their website, where they can get revenue. If that model is changed, it would not be overly complicated to create an API to your application which would allow integration with other applications in some way. If I can use sshfs to make a remote filesystem look exactly like a local one, surely it's possible to write hooks into your web app to integrate it with other desktop software.