You're attributing too much to Google.

Bots are now blocked because they've been abusive. When you host content on the internet, it's not fun to have bots bring your server down or inflate your bandwidth price. Google's bot is actually quite well-behaved. The other problem has been the recent trend in AI, and I can understand blockers being put in place, since AI is essentially plagiarizing content without attribution. But I'd blame OpenAI more at this point.

I also don't think you can blame Google for the centralization behind closed gardens. Or for why people no longer link to other websites. That's ridiculous.

And you should be attributing them the fact that the web is still alive.