As a web developer that has never touched electron I would imagine the benefit is simple: * One API that "just works" * Guaranteed caching of necessary assets * Access to native features (such as simplified access to the file system)

I could totally see all of this on the browser. But then the file system needs to go to the cloud, we need to consider hipster browsers (like k-meleon and omniweb), and we have to deal with the browser determining how our assets are cached and evicted.