Does it do what Perplexity does?

Probably, but it would depend on how much gross revenue they make on said practice, and how often they get a fine.

Seem much smarter and humane to redistribute the resources, and direct most of those resources to find resource efficient processes.

If there is money to be made those companies would make deals for data/ad-space, it’s just that they will do it in competition with other ad services and search services for example. That’s how a healthy market works, no? (Aside from the problematic data brokerage which is another issue)

And if they can’t survive that, then the business should probably not exist.

In that sense you could argue the market is “hurt” but I think consumers will benefit in the long run when competition can thrive, and monopolies do not exist.

Then the search company buy the ad service from the ad company, as all other search engines can then do as well. Isn’t that the point of breaking up a big company?

I’m a layman, but how is that harming the market?

So you browse the web without css? Now that’s old school!