Whilst this is heading somewhat off-topic, Google is a completely different kettle of fish.
Google is (and always has) been a commercial service, with no user created content. They don't rely on the community (for example) to curate their search results.
On the other hand, TheTVDB started off life as a community project for the (as then was) XBMC many years ago.
It's entire dataset has been added by volunteers over the years.
The original owners of TheTVDB then chose to sell out to private equity, who have in turn landed us with the current situation in the quest to make a quick buck.
If you seriously think they aren't going to be making a killing from this, think again.
It very much gets my goat (as an open-source developer myself; My username on GitHub if you really want to find me) to see free community projects going down this road.
Monetization, developer time, hosting costs etc. are *always* a problem (I probably spend £200 or so out of my own pocket every year), but this is not the solution.