They lost ad impressions.
I don't imagine anyone casual enough to use Google to answer that who would be willing to spend a lot of time trying to figure that out using an advertisement-laden "free" website.
Why not? It's not like that they had any other options than trying to extract that information from ad-laden websites. Most people read rather slowly, and by the time they either find out what they need or decide that they give up, lots of ad impressions have already had happened.
Sure, that counts as revenue. It's not something I'm going to lose sleep over. I don't exactly think that advertisements should be a profitable "feature" of the internet in its current form.
> Why not? It's not like that they had any other options than trying to extract that information from ad-laden websites.
You completely missed my point. Now that Google "owns" the data and provides the answer, the user won't need to click on a scummy site.
Moreover, casual questions not answered directly by Google are answered by casual browsing. Casual browsing happens with ad blockers. If a site breaks when an ad blocker is in use, users exit the site.
I'm having trouble understanding how the site would have lost potential revenue. All the query wanted to know was the net worth of someone. I don't imagine anyone casual enough to use Google to answer that who would be willing to spend a lot of time trying to figure that out using an advertisement-laden "free" website. I don't imagine anyone professionally interested in that answer who'd use Google as their primary resource nor would they click on ads on the target site.
On the other hand, Google gets to know who's talking about whom. That in and of itself is/can be valuable. I can see an argument be made for abuse of monopoly here. On the other hand, I think what Google does indeed benefit the consumer in this case. The casual user's experience is likely improved and the professional user's experience still wouldn't use Google as a primary resource.