I don't quite agree. Gatsby Inc have been doing a ton of work in this area, and it is really impressive. It's one of the reasons that its platform has been such a draw to larger companies with more complex data and content sourcing needs.
Meanwhile, with so many people talking about the acquisition as if Netlify purely acquired the Gatsby.js framework, I find it helpful to frame it like this:
Gatsby Inc is to Gatsby.js
as
Vercel is to Next.js
I recognize that fear. And have made similar observations of the current landscape.
Our hope in this instance is actually that the opposite is true.
The goal of this acquisition is not to OWN a JavaScript framework. Gatsby Inc is far bigger than Gatsby.js
The Gatsby.js project will join the Solid.js and Eleventy open source projects that Netlify already support through full time employment but who's roadmaps and operations are their own. Using those tools is not a means for Netlify to funnel developers into our platform, nor a means to attempt to lock users in. Our philosophy is that an abundance and variety of such tools is good for the web (and as a result good for us). Also that more tools will come in future and that we'd like to try to provide the best experience and support for whatever those might be down the line. We can't own it all. We'd prefer to support it.
Meanwhile, Gatsby Inc have created very powerful build and content orchestration tooling which is currently only available to Gatsby.js users. This acquisition will result in those capabilities being made available to any frameworks further helping all comers to the frameworks landscape.
I'm a big fan of serving content APIs as static assets like you are doing here. Especially good for content which changes infrequently (a few times a day rather than many times a minute).
Static site generators typically make it simple to publish a structured data view like a JSON or XML feed of content alongside content pages as HTML (such a bonus!), but it is interesting to see that you've separated the API generation entirely as a Hugo build. (presumably for compile speed?)
I work at Netlify and am something of a JAMstack enthusiast. I'd love to learn more about the experience of designing and building this. If you'd be interested in doing more of a write up, or just sharing any of the learnings from along the way, I'd love to chat.
Theo had a pretty perceptive take on this on his stream yesterday. Worth a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJc9UYva46I&t=5384s
Meanwhile, with so many people talking about the acquisition as if Netlify purely acquired the Gatsby.js framework, I find it helpful to frame it like this:
Gatsby Inc is to Gatsby.js as Vercel is to Next.js
Netlify acquired Gatsby Inc