They picked the wrong analogy, they misunderstand how much human tuning via specific data sets which show how to arrive at an answer (sound familiar to feature engineering?), they misunderstand how specific vertical solutions get.

Why not pick databases wrapped in a UI as an analogy? That analogy would go the other way - despite the fact it seems simple and sensible from an integration perspective to have a single database with all the UI a business would need, we have a bajillion specialist SAAS products which then jump through hoops to integrate with each other? Why? Because the workflows are so damned specific to the tasks at hand, some "generic" solution doesn't work.