Only reason I can think of is to traverse firewalls that block outbound sockets but don't block HTTP+WebSocket. That aside, it seems a bit ridiculous, given th

Only reason I can think of is to traverse firewalls that block outbound sockets but don't block HTTP+WebSocket. That aside, it seems a bit ridiculous, given that we already have sockets, to bolt on a protocol that exists almost solely to work around security issues involved in a browser opening a socket.