The core problem is definitely that many small business sites, especially restaurant ones, are really terrible outdated, and really not run by someone who would understand the concept of "upload text file to server".
So perversely, storing the information centrally would be easier, but who would you trust with it? The temptation to create a walled garden and "monetize" all that juicy local business data would be very strong for the maintainers. And then everything falls apart into small localized non-interoperating fiefdoms again, and we're back where we started...
The core problem is definitely that many small business sites, especially restaurant ones, are really terrible outdated, and really not run by someone who would understand the concept of "upload text file to server".
So perversely, storing the information centrally would be easier, but who would you trust with it? The temptation to create a walled garden and "monetize" all that juicy local business data would be very strong for the maintainers. And then everything falls apart into small localized non-interoperating fiefdoms again, and we're back where we started...