While the article is about eventual consistency, the real reason local web apps haven't become popular is that current browsers don't support them. Any code running in the browser has to come from some url. The server at that url is assumed to control everything. Any data stored locally might vanish any time, and can't be accessed by code loaded from any other url. So while you might like the idea of "just running code on my computer via the browser to do something useful" what you're actually doing is providing a way for whoever controls the web server to do whatever they want on your computer (modulo what Google wants). Since any idea of an independent app running on your computer is a fiction, there's no need to even attempt to solve the eventual consistency problems. Just have the server that's in total control do your consistency.