I think MCP’s popularity is a side effect of the hype bubble driving AI atm - one of the fancy things one can do with AI.
If there was any “easy” value in making one’s data available in a standard form, we would’ve seen a lot more adoption of interoperable endpoints (e.g. using schema.org or generally common ontologies as opposed to custom formats that always need a special magic SDK).
There is an easy way to make your data available. It's existed for several hundred years, it's called plain text. We now have tools that allow computers to work with plain text. Outside of specific niches ontologies are vanity projects.
If there was any “easy” value in making one’s data available in a standard form, we would’ve seen a lot more adoption of interoperable endpoints (e.g. using schema.org or generally common ontologies as opposed to custom formats that always need a special magic SDK).