I think you have missed the mark by such a wide margin that I need to call you on your bullshit.

> I think what lots of people are missing is that Websockets doesn't compete with REST or SOAP, it competes with HTTP.

Websockets of any reference are implentations of HTTP, your lack of knowledge is not a badge of authority.

"Of course, this happens within a sandbox that involves initiating the connection over HTTP and tunneling the protocol through a server over port 80."

I am sure that you have no clue about what your talking about, I will bring this forward with the following statement:

"We're back to the days when anyone could and did develop their own protocols, and many of those became standards."

Your name is not on any IETF bodies or standards, who are you exactly?