“Interest in “geospatial” (a term that functions well as a proxy for similar terms) declined and flatlined until late 2023 – right when DuckDB released their spatial extension.”
DuckDB cut geospatial setup to two lines by bundling GDAL and PROJ into one extension. Interest in geospatial work had flatlined until that extension shipped. The author admits correlation is not causation. Removing install pain does more than new features.