Interesting post. But what knocked out Blockbuster was an epic change that rendered their entire business model obsolete. The same thing happened to Blackberry.

Gutenberg - and I'm reasonably fond of it - is NOT a defense against such changes. As big as it is, Gutenberg is still ultimately an incremental improvement to one part of the software that still does more or less the same thing. And that minor innovation is happening in an ecosystem where page builders are already doing similar (or better) kinds of innovation.

It's like saying Blockbuster could have saved itself by rearranging its stores. Or Blackberry could have saved itself by introducing a modestly better interface. To save themselves, they would have had to radically reinvent, almost to the point of going into a different business.

What can ultimately kill WordPress is a transformative innovation that fundamentally changes how we serve and consume content (ie, imagine consuming all content in VR, and then imagine a new platform custom built for optimal VR content creation and consumption). When such change comes, Gutenberg and similar innovations are unlikely to save WordPress.

(To put it differently, Gutenberg is the kind of improvement that Blockbuster and Blackberry WERE doing.)