Also, where do you draw the line on what content Google should have to pay to index? What about independent bloggers for example? This policy could potentially open a whole new can of worms.
I'm actually curious now about the principle here. Can the same idea be applied to the news websites themselves? If a news organization links to a Twitter thread then can Twitter or the users of Twitter demand payment from the news organization? If not, why not? What if it's a blog instead?
If it's a blog on a site you control, you can control that license
Google's optimal position would be if you keep searching for the stuff you are looking for and get distracted by ads and buy something in the process.
The second best thing would be if you find the stuff you are looking for directly on Google(Google no longer shows only search results but the content of the results as if it comes from them) and then you proceed to buy something through an ad click.
For example, Google wins if you search for "When did Trump leave the White House" and you see a snipped containing "Trump left the WH in the early morning of January 20, 2021 using a helicopter". Now that you have your answer through the content that Google mined for free, they can monetize you but what about the people who put together that information? Why they would be left out of your business? What's fair about that?
There was a recent HN discussion about Google mining the database of a small business that specialises on compiling information on the wealth of celebrities. They lost most of their traffic when Google began showing the answer from their database directly instead of showing the link that contains this information. Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24105465
I completely agree on the second point. Google's 'Featured Snippets' are a clear overreach where Google uses people's content at no cost and gives nothing in return. This needs to be regulated because nobody is going to opt-out. For example, I've had some featured snippets and they bring a lot of traffic. Much less than a normal first place listing but more than a second place listing. If I opt-out of Featured Snippets in protest then someone else will just happily take that spot.
Perhaps the balance lies in just indexing headlines of sites. Then publishers could decide if they want to give up that information in their headlines. It's a tough to know where to draw the line but that seems like it's been the fairest balance so far.