If Google did this, as in stopped sending users to content producers and just returned aggregated and processed content from all the pages in its index, they’d be met with robots.txt DENY entries and regulated out of existence in developed countries within days. They got burned once[0], so they know to tread carefully.

While we still should be offended at the amount of featured snippets Google still shows today, it’s not nearly as much of a ripoff as what ChatGPT effectively does.

[0] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/australia-media-code-faceboo...