As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue

Is it only me who feels its incredibly unfair for publishers, that not only did big tech trained their LLMs on free content authored by these publishers, but it's also killing their future revenue. It's like stealing from someone and then making sure they never make money again.

Yes it's unfair. It's digital colonialism. What's sad is that other companies keep falling for the false narrative that big tech monopolies act as partners and not the blood sucking leeches they've become to represent.

Competition in the free market is not colonialism. The capitalistic marketplace is meant to involve disruption. That's the entire point: new companies come along and out-compete and out-innovate older companies and business models. The consumer wins. This is not the same as invading countries and subjugating the inhabitants, who have a human right to a peaceful life. No business in a capitalistic marketplace has a "right" to continue enjoying profits and resist innovation.

Violating/changing the meaning of copyright law and demanding special carvouts AFTER THE FACT is not 'competition'. (AI)

Breaking hospitality/zoning laws is not 'competition'. (AirBnb)

Breaking taxi/transportations laws and regulation is not 'competition'. (Uber/Lyft)

Misclassifying workers to bypass employment laws is not 'competition'. (All 'gig' companies)

Operating unlicensed financial services is not 'competition'. (fintech)

Being given special content liability carveouts only to your platform is not 'competition'. (social media)

Evading antitrust norms via vertical integration is not 'competition'. (Apple app store and 30% rent)

Flooding the market with illegal or gray-area imports is not 'competition'. (Amazon)

Exploiting data without consent is not 'competition'. (all tech at this point)

Using investor capital to subsidize predatory pricing is not 'competition'. (almost all tech)

Every industry 'new' tech has gone after they have cheated, broken laws and/or had/pushed for (normally after the fact) special carveouts from the law so that they are the only ones in their field that get to operate a different way, used and harvested data in bad faith, used predatory unsustainable pricing practices.

Show me where tech has 'outcompeted' without doing any of the above. Where the product didn't need special protections/carvouts to existing law, didn't exploit data/peoples trust, didn't use investment capital to artificially lower prices, didn't utilize 'grey areas' to skirt barriers that ACTUAL competing companies obeyed, where the product delivered, on it's own, created a unicorn.

Edit: Responding as edit because I've been timed out. Apple is doing rent-seeking enforced through ecosystem control. This is traditionally seen as a monopolistic practice and historically/based on capitalist philosophy companies that did this were seen as a threat to capitalism and broken up/punished for this behavior. Rent seeking is explicitly anti-capitalist in classical economic thought.

> Evading antitrust norms via vertical integration is not 'competition'. (Apple app store and 30% rent)

This one is competition though. No one is forced to use Apple or develop for Apple. People purchase Apple because they like their products more than the alternatives.