> Newegg uses ads.

That's not my point. We generally understand that newegg is there to sell you something. I was using it as a convenient example and perhaps a better one could be found. Just because they use ads does not invalidate my point there.

From the HN guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

> as a content provider, you might not want users who refuse to go through CAPTCHA. Nobody is forcing you to access the content.

Theoretically speaking, this is true. I can opt to simply close the page, turn off my computer, etc. However, it may not be practical to do this all the time. Some example maybe school/government institutions that you have to use deploys reCAPTCHA, or something like the CloudFlare pages that makes you fill out a reCAPTCHA for each website (which amounts to a large part of the internet).

> It only hurts users that the content provider doesn't care about, because they don't generate any revenue.

Disagreed. Perhaps in cases with ad based sites that is the case. If you're selling something and preventing me to buy from you, you're hurting users that may generate revenue. You could say that perhaps the benefit is outweighed by the cost, which maybe true from an abuse perspective. However, if everyone starts doing this, then my cynical view of Google will play out, which is the original point of my argument.

It's clear there's an economic incentive at play, otherwise Google won't develop this and people wouldn't deploy this. I just think that it's overly favored towards Google (and other ad based entities), as opposed to sites that do not rely on ads and the users.