I mean, this was long time coming. The web existed in a symbiotic relationship. Publishers (news, blogs, website owners) always saw search engines as a way to get users/traffic into their own property. The search engine made money by showing ads during that time, and publishers got users which they otherwise would not have.

Perplexity takes the content from the websites, show them as their own on their own site ("answers"), making the websites irrelevant. This has 2 issues

1. The websites lose users -> they make less money -> they go out of business

2. Fewer websites mean perplexity does not have any content to "distill" and "answer" responses with, leading to sub-par product.

It is a vicious cycle.