Google Sues SerpApi Over Search Result Scraping

Google has filed a lawsuit against SerpApi, a firm that scrapes Google's search results and resells them, claiming that SerpApi violates both laws and Google's terms of service. According to Ars Technica, this lawsuit is part of a broader strategy by Google to protect its search data, which is critical to its business model.

Google emphasizes that SerpApi's actions not only harm it but also infringe on the rights of the websites it indexes, as these sites did not consent to have their content scraped. The Verge reports that Google developed a technological measure, SearchGuard, to restrict access to its search results pages, but SerpApi managed to circumvent these protections by masking automated queries to appear as human activity.

This lawsuit follows a trend where major tech companies, including Reddit, have taken legal action against SerpApi for similar reasons, highlighting ongoing tensions regarding data privacy and intellectual property in the tech industry.