“It feels like everyone is now choosing its side. You can’t stay in the middle anymore. You are either dedicating all your CPU cycles to run JavaScript tracking you or walking away from the big monopolies. You are either being paid to build huge advertising billboards on top of yet another framework or you are handcrafting HTML.”
The “split” the author talks about really boils down to whether the webpage is a document or an app. If JavaScript is required, it’s an app. Otherwise it’s a document.
If this terminology catches on, it will help improve the situation. When an org says “visit our webpage”, the response could be something like “oh, you want me to run your app… no thanks; but if you have a proper document I’d take a look.”