You're crafting a false narrative of poor news media being forced to dig their own grave by someone else, when that is not even remotely true. They've been cost cutting and compromising themselves way before some evil tech corporation came to them.
There's really no industry that deserves this kind of history repainting less than the media moguls.
That was very generous of the billion dollar corporation to do. I'm sure there was no self serving motivation behind it.
> of poor news media being forced to dig their own grave
You seem to be struggling to see this outside of a black and white narrative and are mistaking your own polemic as being diametrically opposed to my point of view.
> There's really no industry that deserves this kind of history repainting less than the media moguls.
You also seem to be unaware of just how many small and medium sized broadcasters and publishers there are or how large this industry actually is. You are interested in narratives, I'm interested in facts. I don't think there's much more to discuss between us.
I'm not "blaming" Google, nor should you be "defending" them. What I'm attempting to do here is show that they definitely, perhaps indirectly, played a significant part in the shape of the modern web. While simultaneously decrying the laziness of publishers that led them to this late stage outcome.
I mean.. did you want to discuss how things might improve, or did you just want to score points?