Of course, these products / services could unlazy themselves and create and maintain guides themselves - the rate of change would be reduced a LOT if they had to update guides accordingly.
Yup. Almost all documentation, even documentation that is called "good", in software is pretty awful. Developers grow to accept it but give any layperson software documentation and try to get them to set up your tool/service. I bet they will quit 5 minutes in. Is that the standard we should hold documentation to? I don't know but I bet your user/customer count would go up if it was a lot easier to get started.
