That’s not really analogous and kind of misses some of the other aspects the author talks about.
Excel doesn’t cover the publishing and discovery aspect. It is absolutely atrocious from a machine usability and schema perspective, nevermind performance, etc.
Even if you think excel does address those, I think the shortcomings of the format should rule it out. It is better to have a more powerful tool, and fix the usability aspects, rather than trying to proverbially rub glitter on what amounts to a turd of a format.