Nadella was asked about this. He basically said that they have a responsibility to drive users to sites with click through or else sites won't have an incentive to be crawled.
> He basically said that they have a responsibility to drive users to sites with click through or else sites won't have an incentive to be crawled.
This is partially a BS answer. As long as websites are running Google Ads, they will have an incentive to be crawled. Fewer clicks > no clicks (which is what would happen if the site was set to 'noindex'.
Google also pays news publishers to license their content; $1bn alone just for Google News Showcase [0]
How that pans out in practice remains to be seen.