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Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

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Re: Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

#81

Post by Nextgrid »

miki123211 wrote: post #79
ddtaylor wrote: post #62

Google really doesn't have a leg to stand on here. They scrape the Internet. They replace content against the wishes of users multiple different times, such as with AMP. Their entire business model recently has been to provide you answers they learned from scraping your website and now they want to sue other people who are doing the same. Data wants to be free. They knew that once. EDIT: Also to be clear I am not say…

As the post says, Google only scrapes the websites that want to be scraped. Sure, it's opt-out (via robots.txt) rather than opt-in, but they do give you a choice. You can even decide between no scraping at all and opting out on a per-scraper basis, and Google will absolutely honor your preferences in that regard. SERP API just assumes everybody wants to be scraped, and doesn't give you a choice. (whether websites sho…

This is a bad argument because Google is using its monopoly to effectively force websites to allow Google to scrape them.

Re: Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

#83

Post by crote »

ricardo81 wrote: post #73
ddtaylor wrote: post #62

Google really doesn't have a leg to stand on here. They scrape the Internet. They replace content against the wishes of users multiple different times, such as with AMP. Their entire business model recently has been to provide you answers they learned from scraping your website and now they want to sue other people who are doing the same. Data wants to be free. They knew that once. EDIT: Also to be clear I am not say…

Unfortunately they do have a couple of points that may prove salient (though I fully agree about them being scrapers also). You can search Google _for free_ (with all the caveats of that statement), part of their grievance is that serpapi use the scraped data as a paid for service Lots of Google bot blocking is also circumvented, which they seem to have made a lot of efforts towards in the past year - robots.txt dire…

> You can search Google for free

I thought the ads counted as payment? That seems to be the logic used to take technical measures against adblockers on YouTube while pushing users towards a paid ad-free subscription, at least.

If viewing ads is payment, then Google isn't a free service. If viewing ads isn't payment, then Google should have no problem with people using adblockers.

Re: Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

#84

Post by Nextgrid »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #70
ddtaylor wrote: post #62

Google really doesn't have a leg to stand on here. They scrape the Internet. They replace content against the wishes of users multiple different times, such as with AMP. Their entire business model recently has been to provide you answers they learned from scraping your website and now they want to sue other people who are doing the same. Data wants to be free. They knew that once. EDIT: Also to be clear I am not say…

Eh, and in 20 if SerpApi or whatever the fuck becomes the next google, they’ll have a blog post titled “Why we’re taking legal action against BlemFlamApi data collection”. The biggest joke was all the “hackers” 25 years ago shouting “Don’t be evil like Oracle, Microsoft, Apple or Adobe and charge for your software, be good like Google and just put like a banner ad or something and give it away for free”

We need a legal precedent that enshrines adversarial interoperability as legal so that we can have a competitive market of BlemFlamApis with no risks of being sued.

Re: Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

#85

Post by VBprogrammer »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #68
jonatron wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're in a unique position where many people allow googlebot but try to block most other bots

Allow for the purpose of indexing, not training models. Like if you give a friend a key to your house so they can check on your plants when you're out of town but they throw a rager and trash the place.

> throw a rager

That was not a phrase I expected to read on Hacker News! Haven't heard it since I was about 13. I always assumed it was a Scottish phrase.

Re: Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

#86

Post by fragmede »

polishdude20 wrote: post #63

"Google follows industry-standard crawling protocols, and honors websites’ directives over crawling of their content." Is that true with how they trained Gemini? Doesn't everyone with a foundational model scrape the web relentlessly without regard for robots.txt?

Google honors robots.txt. They're not "everyone with. a foundational model" though.

Re: Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

#87

Post by crote »

throwawaysoxjje wrote: post #77
maplethorpe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Scraping for search engines is different. They need to scrape the data to build the index, otherwise the search wouldn’t work.

Being indexed in a search engine benefits the website owner, as it drives traffic towards the website.

Being used as AI training data provides negative value for a website owner, as it takes traffic away.

It's the difference between a movie review, and a ripped torrent.

Re: Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

#88

Post by p0w3n3d »

ddtaylor wrote: post #62

Google really doesn't have a leg to stand on here. They scrape the Internet. They replace content against the wishes of users multiple different times, such as with AMP. Their entire business model recently has been to provide you answers they learned from scraping your website and now they want to sue other people who are doing the same. Data wants to be free. They knew that once. EDIT: Also to be clear I am not say…

they have the Leg to stand on. It's called Money. Second one is called Position (on the market). Third is Lawyers. It's a stable tripod

Re: Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping

#90

Post by LunaSea »

ricardo81 wrote: post #73
ddtaylor wrote: post #62

Google really doesn't have a leg to stand on here. They scrape the Internet. They replace content against the wishes of users multiple different times, such as with AMP. Their entire business model recently has been to provide you answers they learned from scraping your website and now they want to sue other people who are doing the same. Data wants to be free. They knew that once. EDIT: Also to be clear I am not say…

Unfortunately they do have a couple of points that may prove salient (though I fully agree about them being scrapers also). You can search Google _for free_ (with all the caveats of that statement), part of their grievance is that serpapi use the scraped data as a paid for service Lots of Google bot blocking is also circumvented, which they seem to have made a lot of efforts towards in the past year - robots.txt dire…

> You can search Google _for free_

Well not through their API which you do need to pay for and is a paid service.

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