The only concrete solution the article proposes that I can think of: Spanner uses quorum to maintain availability and consistency. Your "master" is TrueTime, wh

The only concrete solution the article proposes that I can think of: Spanner uses quorum to maintain availability and consistency. Your "master" is TrueTime, which is considered reliable enough. You have replicated app backends. If this isn't too generous, let's also say the cloud handles load balancing well enough. CAP isn't violated, but you might say the user no longer worries about it. Most databases don't work like Spanner, and Spanner has its downsides, two of them being cost and performance. So most of the time, you're using a traditional DB with maybe a RW replica, which will sacrifice significant consistency or availability depending on whether you choose sync or async mode. And you're back to worrying about CAP.