I have added from pictures to missing places into Google. For me, the tit for tat is to help other travellers to find interesting places, to not get lost or to know what to expect when in a foreign country/city.

But, I always contribute similar content to Wikipedia/Wikicommons. Because I see that as a more fitting philosophy for sharing knowledge. The type of information and the format is not the same, thou.

Google is just practical. It is frustrating to plan a visit to a museum in a city that I will spend one day to find out that has been closed for half a year.

So, I agree as I have my own self-doubts about giving things for free to Google when they are going to use that data to send me or others more targeted advertisements.

i probably should clarify, i was referring to businesses, not people. Right now, opening up your website to google, is basically an invitation to steal your content. Paywalls are the only way to keep them from doing it.

because grim reality is that there is no other way around this. And the paywalled sites argument - even they are providing their content to google, it's just the user who gets paywall. Another question is if this does even work - maybe for top 50 sites? Even here on HN where wealthy readers are flexing with their expensive cars, houses, earnings etc. at the same time when paywalled article appears it is circumvented by outline/archive link or criticized.

perhaps if, however, tripadvisor had not been opening its content for free to google, but took it behind a signup-wall (like facebook does), they would have trained users to use their own site instead of google for trip information. It's doable, because the use case of their website is quite specific (i've only used the tripadvisor app while traveling). If they didn't make it so easy for google to impersonate them, they might have had a more loyal, monetizable audience. It's slightly inconvenient for users, but the alternative nowadays is complete destruction of the company.