[turc1656]

Yeah, the issue here is that he doesn't want to block Google from indexing his site because he wants to be ranked in the results, so he allows Google to display information that is on his site. He would have to disallow reproduction of his site's materials formally, or the much easier method of robots.txt that you mention. Ideally, he would do both. But he knows that will also kill traffic because then he's limited to other search providers like (gasp) Bing.

This is all on him. Is what Google is doing shitty? Yeah. But at the same time it's almost insane that this guy knew his research could be boiled down to a single number (which is clearly displayed on his website) and his whole business model was getting Google traffic. You can't rely on an informal agreement with a titan of industry and expect to have any bargaining or negotiating power.