Yeah, thars a more generous way to put it. People are fine with the illusion of one basket. Thars pretty much how any large website works.

The ideal would be for users to choose their front end and have backends hook into it via protocols. Aka RSS feeds or Email (to some extent). But the allure of being vertically integrated is too great, and users will rarely question it.

>But the services are being dumb, because everyone except for the largest incumbent is better off to give the people what they want.

Yup, agreed. At this point, it's really an issue regulation can fix. Before it's too late.