[leepowers]

I've always been fascinated by people who spend huge chunks of time creating and maintaining Wikipedia articles. Are they driven by a simple love research and curating information? Or maybe knowing their articles could potentially inform and educate millions of people.

I wonder how driven content creators would be if they believed no one would read their articles; if the information they carefully curated was mere bot food, digested and summarized on a Google search results page. The summaries may have greater utility for search engine users. Yet at the same time the ecosystem as a whole would be degraded if the incentives for creating rich detailed content are degraded.

Google relies on free and open access to a vast sea of information. Most of this information exists due to the labor of other people. If any company wants to use this information to create a free and open source search engine, voice assistant, etc., I say more power to that company. But when a company uses free and open data to power proprietary walled gardens, we should consider the regulatory implications and the effect on the ecosystem as a whole. And Google is large enough that when it creates a walled garden (keeping visitors tied Google properties and products) that it could have a significant negative impact.