Comment by DocTomoe
1 hour ago
Nobody is stopping you from publishing on the net.
Nobody is stopping you from blocking bot traffic.
You don't need search engines - you can just link between sites or have webrings. Like we used to, pre-2000.
Nobody is stopping you from not using ads on the net.
Nobody can force you to use non-essential cookies (and thus: a cookie-banner).
Imagine there was a war going on, and no-one was showing up.
I don't think people much liked the pre-search-engine era. They used lousy search engines when they became available, and when a good one started they liked it so much that they verbed its name.