[pierrefar]

There is a a difference between a human being able to access content vs a search engine indexing it (and in the case of Brave, "licensing" it on).

I share your concern about Google having this much power, and I'd add that Microsoft Bing is equally bad but gets away with it because they're smaller. Still, the final decision about which search engine indexes a website is purely the publisher's.

[memefrog]

There is a difference between Americans and Chinese people but that doesnt mean discriminating on racial lines is justified. Just saying "there is a difference" isnt an argument. Indexing a website isnt the same as reading it, but it is a form of consumption and I see no reason why they should be treated differently.

And to use that analogy even further, if you want to block Chinese visitors you block Chinese IPs. You do not add a file called "countries.txt" containing "China block" and then expect Chinese users to see it and voluntarily cease to use it, and threaten to sue them if they don't.

Repeatedly asserting that "the final decision is with the publisher" is stupid. That is the point you seem to want to defend. Defend it! Give us a reason. Just saying the same thing over and over again doesnt make it true.

[Grimburger]

> There is a a difference between a human being able to access content vs a search engine indexing it

Much of the problem with search today arises from websites showing googlebot what it wants to see and showing real users. I have to manually remove entire domains from google search as they often appear 1st yet don't show any content without me signing up for an account. Clearly that's not what they are showing to google.

There should be no differentiation between a crawler and a human being with regards to what is being served.