> then I would point out that it’s very unwise to build a business whose success is based entirely on the whims of another business.

When that other business is a monopoly, what choice do you have? The rise of google has effectively killed all other sources of traffic. Web sites used to get their traffic from things like webrings, directories and a variety of smaller search engines. Now? Google, or one of its properties, and to a smaller degree Meta are basically it. The curator and community discovery model is a victim of google, not a solution to it.