Web Services becoming Generic?

I read a post by Udi Dahan titled, "Generic Web Services Evolution." It is an interesting take on what is still lacking in Web Services (rich messaging...pub/sub). Structurally, web services have different roots and therefore were not made to do things such as pub/sub, but there are ugly ways to emulate that environment. One such way would be to make an async call to a "publisher" web service. If that times out, recall it. If it responds, take appropriate action. Like I said, not pretty, but would it do the trick?