I think the point is, that microservices and data meshes are simply hard to compare at all. It might sound like data meshes basically say "do that microservice thingy in the data world".

But that's not really the case, because the environments for these two moves are very different. The data mesh is a hole paradigm shift which is much more about the organization, people & processes, about truly transfering ownership than it is about any technological solution. Microservices are really only one technological architecture decision whereas data mesh is about the company, and much less about the technology.

And that comes from the fact that the environment simply are very different. When we're starting to implement microservices, we usually already have teams responsible for separate components of hole systems.

That might not be the case in the data mesh world however! I hope that make sense. Basically that's comparing apples to oranges because of these very different environments.