Uh, desktop web shortcuts? Didn't I have this in Windows 98 and IE 5?
My main use case is my multiple Google accounts (work, uni, personal) and their respective calendars. I just fire up evolution, it automatically connects to Google and the calendar widget in the panel populates with my events. Its just a shame that only evolution does this, and Thunderbird does not seem to integrate with it.
This is pretty similar to Android, how you specify your online accounts, and it is up to individual applications to make use of those credentials if they please. There just seems to be much more usage of this in Android than in Gnome.