Well I would argue that gasoline is in fact still the "best" option if by "best" you mean the fuel source that balances energy density, ease of storage, and combustibility. Yes, it is environmentally unfriendly but so is the very notion of billions of personal vehicles to begin with, even if they were fully electric (which we are several decades from plausibly achieving).

At the end of the day, Excel is spreadsheet software. This is a class of product that is very old and there are few major innovations really left, which is also why Excel remains the leader. When you have a technology that has matured to such an extent, you are now chasing the margins in terms of improvement and that is where the largest and most well funded companies hold the advantage.

However the next step beyond a simple spreadsheet, the desktop database is still a sector that is quite nascent, especially in terms of products catered towards lay people. As you mentioned, currently databases are not particularly user friendly to the non-technical crowd but products like Notion are making such things more accessible. That is the area where I can envision something emerging that makes Excel or the very notion of spreadsheet software itself obsolete.