[DocTomoe]

Nobody is stopping you from publishing on the net.

Nobody is stopping you from blocking bot traffic.

You don't need search engines - you can just link between sites or have webrings. Like we used to, pre-2000.

Nobody is stopping you from not using ads on the net.

Nobody can force you to use non-essential cookies (and thus: a cookie-banner).

Imagine there was a war going on, and no-one was showing up.

[jfengel]

I don't think people much liked the pre-search-engine era. They used lousy search engines when they became available, and when a good one started they liked it so much that they verbed its name.

[imp0cat]

It is definitely an opportunity for a lot of stuff (ie. curated RSS feeds and other forms of discovery) to come back.