I mean, in an ideal world, of course it does. But again: incentives. Keep in mind: search engines themselves are extremely empowering, and they are not generally considered to be something a person pays directly for.
Yeah, empowering users does get developers paid. I get paid to do that myself, and know a lot of other people who also get paid to do that. Of course it's sometimes easier to get paid by treating users like cattle. But if someone doesn't intuitively understand why screwing their users is a bad idea, I'm not sure I can help them.
I mean, in an ideal world, of course it does. But again: incentives. Keep in mind: search engines themselves are extremely empowering, and they are not generally considered to be something a person pays directly for.