Comment by TeMPOraL

Yup, precisely this.

To expand on:

> Similarly, my ideal version of Amazon is a bare HTML page with a search box and a structured list of products and their attributes, that my User Agent can ingest, understand and render in whatever way it sees fit.

My ideal version of Amazon is a MS Access file or equivalent, that my User Agent can treat as an SQL database I can query however the heck I like.

In fact, 90% of the websites and webapps fall into the following three categories:

- Is a poster or ad magazine in disguise;

- Would be much better if supplied as an Excel sheet

- Would be much better if supplied as a database file or connection

Alas.

I'd go as far as saying, the job of great many web startups is to slap an SPA on top of a database to restrict access and charge for usage, like someone finding a shortcut through dense forest, fencing it off and building a toll gate on the path.

And FWIW, it's not like people need things dumbed down into funnels and journeys. Sure, you probably can't expect much from a product aimed literally at everyone above age 2, but there's a host of products used by a narrower segment of population - white-collar workers, or even regular people with working mental faculties. These people can handle spreadsheets and even databases absolutely fine. In fact, there was a brief period of time, when this was taught in schools and as well as universities, particularly to people pursuing degrees in humanities / liberal arts. Databases in particular used to be part of journalist and librarian studies. People could easily learn all this stuff, if it were useful - but the trends on the web made sure it wasn't.

After all, you can't make FU money out of your startup backed by millions in VC dollars, that's just running basic SELECTs for users and charging for it, if users are allowed to run SELECTs themselves.