It was never an analogy. I'm saying that a website should be like a website. Just like a book is like a book. And like books, websites have a purpose that determines their design.
A website can indeed be many different things, but a lot of websites have very similar purposes, so it makes every kind of sense that websites with the same purposes end up looking similar. Just like cars look alike. Or houses.
Of course websites with a different purpose are going to look very different.
A website is nothing like a book in form, function, purpose, appearance, use, lifespan, the list goes on.
You're confusing the equivalence. A "novel" is a type of book. A "website" is not a type of "something".
A website can be anything the owner wants it to be, with different functions and purpose. It doesn't need to conform to the other "novels" because of some perceived "effective form". That's the point I take from the OP's article.
Websites have not "found their form", that's just the reason you've chosen to believe based on so many websites using the same template.