I get ya - sorta. I do think we are running headlong into NoSQL 2.0, where everyone ends up writing very similar but incompatible HTTP accessible key/value stores. Seems like a waste to plow energy into writing web-based key value stores when there are already plenty of good ones.
Pageforest is a pretty thin wrapper on top of a AppEngine's BigTable implementation. It does have to add things like a user accounts, user permissions, and caching layer.
The client library (JavaScript) is also design to make it very easy to write "single-page" web apps. You basically just need to write a setDoc() and getDoc() function to persist your document as a JSON blob in storage.
etherpad was awesome! Difference here is that the app lives client-side - and uses a "generic" server implementation for user authentication, storage, and push notifications.
