[DangitBobby]

Congrats on saying that in the most one-sided way possible. Google makes it literally impossible for them to pay for access to search results to make the product they want (customizable subscription search with no ads), and Google also is the de-facto globally sanctioned crawler because they are the only search engine anyone gives a shit about, and also sites need to be indexed by them to survive. In short, Google owns the river and sells the boats, and the public built a wall around it. Google is in a monopoly position in search.

[Ferret7446]

They have a monopoly on their own search results. There's nothing stopping anyone from making their own (hell, a poster did so in the comments above). God forbid we aren't entitled access to the fruits of their labor; the reason you want it isn't because you can't make it (again, see above). It's because making it good is hard, and you want the good results without yourself putting in the effort to make it

[nova22033]

>In short, Google owns the river and sells the boats, and the public built a wall around it.

That would be a monopoly if there was only 1 river in the whole world.

[DangitBobby]

Yeah I mean think whatever you need to for the metaphor to work.