> Semantic markup is borderline pointless, except to rationalize design elements and keep them consistent.

Consider that from the beginning of the web, people could have composed pages entirely of image maps with hotspots to direct them (and some did).

Or as soon as JS arrived, they could have replaced hyperlinks with scripted behavior (as some did and many do now).

Where would Google have come from? Its foundation was largely in the semantics of hyperlinks.