We are talking about headlines, not links. This is not necessarily about Google Search, but News. Also, it's not that links aren't content from a legal perspec

We are talking about headlines, not links. This is not necessarily about Google Search, but News. Also, it's not that links aren't content from a legal perspective, there's a lot going on there, but that they are opt-out content, meaning that one could just decide not to allow any search engine or aggregator to automatically index their contents. It is also different from personal aggregators, which is why you could do it yourself.