[tyingq]

Because they use an algorithm to extract the data that the searcher is looking for and display it on their site, drastically dropping the chances that anyone clicks through to the site.

Whether it's hostile or not, if they continue far enough, it would choke off the sources. People don't tend to invest time in creating content where there's zero chance to interact with the reader, ever.

Create a site that takes search queries, and return scraped Google results data. Become popular. See how long it takes before it gets shut down.

I do get your high level point, but isn't there some quid-pro-quo involved? People allow Google to crawl, which enriches Google's search product. Some traffic is offered in return for helping their index with high quality content.

Edit: If you doubt the effects widgets have on traffic, take a look at what it's done to Wikipedia traffic[1]. The KG entries used to have many, many deep links into Wikipedia. A lot of those links have changed to deep links into Google.

[1] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wikipedias-traffic-from-...

[narrowrail]

My default search work-flow is 5 keystrokes+$searchquery which gives me wikipedia results which are not always good, but 90% exactly what I need. I try to minimize my use of Google's services at every opportunity, and I'm aggressive with my router's host file (not to mention uMatrix w/ Chromium and Firefox w/ NoScript/RequestPolicy). It bothers me that I can't black-hole Google's domains on my router's host file w/o screwing up too many websites to count (local to international) because so many have built-in Google web resource dependencies (e.g. googleapis/maps/googletagmanager).

However, I can't believe your argument makes sense to anyone. It seems publisher's want the benefit of Google's traffic w/o having to deal with users preferring not to click-through when they are looking for a 1 sentence answer. There are legit means to preventing Google from indexing one's site.

[tyingq]

>when they are looking for a 1 sentence answer.

That's the rub. It's gone way beyond that. Contextually extracted bullet points, full (and sometimes multiple) paragraphs, images, charts, tables, highlighted phrases, etc.

>There are legit means to preventing Google from indexing one's site.

Yes, you can opt of out protection rackets :)

Edit: It's not the only issue with rich snippets. Here's two examples of a "rich snippet" that are bad for everyone: http://imgur.com/a/mpayp http://imgur.com/a/IZmmJ

Both sites being used for the answer are obvious affiliate site that cares only about who is giving out the best commission. Doubtful any info they offer is useful.

Or how about just flat out incorrect facts? http://i.imgur.com/1nNreR2.png