it's not any more of a barrier to entry than the fact that spotify pays artists money and if I want to make a competitor I'd need to do that too. I don't really understand how the idea that platforms reimburse the people whose content they use is supposed to be extraordinary.

Also there is no genuine search competition anyway, so instead of waiting another 20 years I'd just be happy if Google starts paying people for the content that they use.

Spotify would have to pay artists for the right to recommend songs to users, then send those users to the artists site for purchase to be comparable.

That would be a terrible business model though. Maybe the French newspapers should join together to create a search engine of their own content, if there really is a lot of money to be made in that game.

The way that content licensing and exclusive deals work IS a huge barrier to entry for small players.

I think we need to pass legislation that prohibit exclusive content licensing and require that equivalent licensing terms are offered to all competitors (similar perhaps to rules about patent licensing when it is incorporated into a standard?)

Edit: Since Google has a near monopoly on ad networks, there is a sense in which Google already is the one paying for much of this content.