You don't need Google. The Internet is fairly decentralized. You can build your small web even today and just block Google via robots.txt, never use it yourself, and link via webrings.
The Internet is very good at overlay networks. Search engines aren't even required. If you want Google's features then they ask that you pay their price. But if you don't want to play with the rest of us, you can host on your own, you can choose to browse via a free web directory you and others like you maintain, and all that.
It's all there for the taking. It's just that the rest of us derive utility from being part of the network that's growing.
Unfortunately their price is excessive and their income mostly comes from rent-seeking the contribution they make to the value of the internet is negligible and they leverage their position to take an outsized chunk out of income streams.
Google is a literal barrier to entry when it comes to running a web based business - if you can't secure traffic you die and traffic breeds more traffic so it's price is highly inelastic. It's (essentially) the same issue as market driven healthcare if you are dying then prolonging your life (generally) has infinite value and the market price for treatment becomes as much cash as you can get your hands on.
That's only if you want access to all the people who find Google useful. The guy I'm responding to wants a smaller web that doesn't grow. You can do that without drinking from the Google firehouse.
No one is taking the ability to make a smaller web away from anyone. But that's the nature of the small web, it's small. And maybe your business can't sustain itself on small. That's just incompatibility of what you want and physical reality.
You know what people say on this website about blocking ads, right? "Your business model is not my problem". It's true.
I get what you're saying and I sympathize. It just isn't compatible with the other guy's view. In a "smaller web" your business wouldn't even exist.
YaCy certainly comes to mind when considering decentralized web search. Google has a strong control of the pipe of people sending it queries. Though, there are certainly other methods.
The Internet is very good at overlay networks. Search engines aren't even required. If you want Google's features then they ask that you pay their price. But if you don't want to play with the rest of us, you can host on your own, you can choose to browse via a free web directory you and others like you maintain, and all that.
It's all there for the taking. It's just that the rest of us derive utility from being part of the network that's growing.