It feels unstoppable.

Big companies train expensive computers on your content with an explicit goal of not having to credit you, link to you, or even tell you. So search engines don't become a portal to the wider web, they become the one and only place you need to go, and monetize how they please.

It's all packaged up so that people see it and use it and go "well boy howdy that's awful neat". And it is neat. Just neat enough that no criticism of it will ever matter or effect the trajectory.