I'd be more OK with this if Google had a good API for their search results. But they've deprecated it, and now there is no alternative. So I'll continue to use 3rd parties that scrape Google results, until they change their mind.
This ruling might feel good viscerally, but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal. At its inception, Google probably viewed this lawsuit as win-win. Either they successfully sue a competitor into oblivion or establish a precedent that will protect themselves in the future. Google lost, but they still won.
Google crawling respects robots.txt and doesn't break capcha. It is easy to tell Google to piss off. SerpAPI fully relies on end-user proxies distributed like malware (in LG tv apps for instance), it has no other way it could function because it exclusively ingests data from sources that tell it to stop. If you wanted to scrape a bot friendly site, you wouldn't need SerpApi
I'd be more OK with this if Google had a good API for their search results. But they've deprecated it, and now there is no alternative. So I'll continue to use 3rd parties that scrape Google results, until they change their mind.
I agree, then need to bring back Nelson Minar’s old search API, or something like it.
Google does supply search grounding with Gemini API calls, and that is handy, but not general enough.
It's quite important that SERPs are scrapeable, because they keep advertising scams like ETA/ESTA sites: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56886957
This ruling might feel good viscerally, but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal. At its inception, Google probably viewed this lawsuit as win-win. Either they successfully sue a competitor into oblivion or establish a precedent that will protect themselves in the future. Google lost, but they still won.
Google has no moat anymore.
- Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore.
- Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do.
- Just the other day, someone cloned Google Gsuite and it looked awesome
- Drive and Search will be fungible products
- I'm itching at the chance to build my own phone operating system, and there must be thousands of others who want to do the same.
- Chrome can probably be replaced (Firefox gained a whole percentage point last month)
- YouTube still holds value
I don't think Google is safe anymore.
I am somewhat confused - does this mean we can all now legally scrape Google search results?
Always has been
Legally and ‘they won’t do everything they can to stop you’ are not the same thing of course.
Hypocrisy-rich.
If only GPT wouldn't refuse my requests to write a crawler for $site. :(
What about them taking content for their AI summaries? Have they created a system that gets content owners and creators paid in this regard yet?
“You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen, and I think it quite ungentlemanly."
Google crawling respects robots.txt and doesn't break capcha. It is easy to tell Google to piss off. SerpAPI fully relies on end-user proxies distributed like malware (in LG tv apps for instance), it has no other way it could function because it exclusively ingests data from sources that tell it to stop. If you wanted to scrape a bot friendly site, you wouldn't need SerpApi
This sums up every single bit of AI "progress" since 2022.
Source:
Google vs. SerpApi: The Court Granted Our Motion to Dismiss
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995411