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by ryan-allen 4410 days ago
Sounds like a classic Bait and Switch, albeit a good 10 year long one on Google's behalf.

They needed to provide a useful service to begin with to get the traction (good search algorithms for the web-that-is), but now that they are the incumbent, it is more in their interests to penalise website owners and force them to buy ads.

It's sad, but it's normal monopolist behaviour.