I don't disagree with the opinion, but what individual experts think does not factor in much when you have a groundswell of adoption like the web did. At that point people are going to hack whatever they can on top of it, and there are too many varied interests to have any central control, and so things just evolve well beyond the intent or control of any individual mind or architect.

For me, usability mattered a lot and I saw how a lot of the web design experimentation was falling short, but Nielsen was just too backwards looking. We needed forward thinking UX rooted specifically in web culture, and that's what we got through the Zeldmans, Veens, and 37signals of the era.