[dcow]

> would stand little chance against the competing proprietary platforms

Citation needed. What proprietary platforms would have taken hold if not for the grace of gmail?

> Your suggestion that Google pay sites for the traffic they generate should (sic.) like that ridiculous News Corp/Australian shakedown of Facebook and Google

Facebook is complying: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/facebook-to-lift-a... because hey, sharing the pot is better than no pot.

I think the point is that nobody would go to Google if they didn't need to look something up on Wikipedia. So while Google helps users discover content and funnel them towards sites, Google would be 100% useless without the content that ultimately drives the traffic. The status quo, where Google lays 100% claim to the traffic and gets to control monetization, is frankly not in anybody's interest. So why should we accept it?