As a consumer, I don't care about where or who I get my results from.
If I search for "NYC to LAX Monday", I don't care if I have to click through to a shady website with lots of SEO experts who will probably miss the "Monday" part of my query anyway, I'd rather get a nice list of flights right in my search results. I don't care if those are provided by Google, a third-party website that Google scrapes, somebody Google signs a deal with or somebody who implements a Google-provided API for this and is good at SEO, as a consumer, I care about flying, not clicking links. Forcing Google to hide the flights UI and link me to Expedia is a worse experience for me. Same applies to News, Shopping, facts, answers etc.
If the Google results ever get really bad or way too expensive, most people will switch search engines (or switch search engines for a single use-case), like searching for products on Amazon instead of Google or searching for flights directly on Expedia. So far, Google results are getting worse but results from other (free) search engines aren't that much better, so other people stay with Google and there is that.
If I search for "NYC to LAX Monday", I don't care if I have to click through to a shady website with lots of SEO experts who will probably miss the "Monday" part of my query anyway, I'd rather get a nice list of flights right in my search results. I don't care if those are provided by Google, a third-party website that Google scrapes, somebody Google signs a deal with or somebody who implements a Google-provided API for this and is good at SEO, as a consumer, I care about flying, not clicking links. Forcing Google to hide the flights UI and link me to Expedia is a worse experience for me. Same applies to News, Shopping, facts, answers etc.
If the Google results ever get really bad or way too expensive, most people will switch search engines (or switch search engines for a single use-case), like searching for products on Amazon instead of Google or searching for flights directly on Expedia. So far, Google results are getting worse but results from other (free) search engines aren't that much better, so other people stay with Google and there is that.