I'm happy that WordPress is getting more external investment, but I find it hard to imagine how Elementor has a long-term future in WordPress with their thinking.

Sure, it has a place now, and will for at least a few more years, but as Gutenberg matures why would anyone want the added bloat? Once you abstract the window dressing, all page builders (including Gutenberg) are fairly similar. The remaining differences are a matter of workflow and taste because moving blocks/sections around isn't unique.

Elementor seems particularly doomed when the Elementor CEO says nonsensical things like this:

“We are constantly testing out new integrations with the goal of improving compatibility with Gutenberg,” said Luksenberg. “We believe in democratizing the editor so different WordPress users and different personas will have their editor of choice. This way, they can pick the editor that best fits their unique needs and preferences. This is the beauty of open source. There are endless ways to build a contact form: Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack Forms. Similarly, there are endless ways to build and design a web page.”

He compares the editor to Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms and Jetpack Forms, which makes no sense. Gutenberg, the editor, is in WordPress core, meaning 100% of sites will have it. There are no forms that are part of WordPress core. The equivalent is closer to building a competitor to the WordPress core user management system, media component, plugin system, etc. Don't let path dependence (that page builders normalized before Gutenberg, which is still in its infancy) let that statement seem any less ridiculous than it is.

Will people have different preferences that the ecosystem will fill? Of course, these will be the block plugins, style/feature plugins and additional layers of complexity that will evolve as Gutenberg matures, but they will all be built on core WordPress (Gutenberg) because doing anything else is just duplicative bloat.

Wil this be obvious 1 year from now? Maybe, maybe not. But WordPress has been around for nearly 20 years, we should all be used to playing the long-game by now. What's the logical conclusion of these paths?