Google has launched a legal battle to safeguard its search results, focusing on a company known as SerpApi that commercializes Googleās iconic search resultsāor the '10 blue links'āby scraping and reselling them. In its lawsuit, Google contends that SerpApi bypasses established legal frameworks and Google's own terms of service, putting the company in a potential gray legal area.
This isn't Googleās first legal action against SerpApi, but it could indicate a more proactive approach by the company in protecting its search data. Similar firms address a real market need by providing access to Googleās data, especially as the search giant lacks an official API for its extensive search engine results pages, which are built on the worldās biggest web index.
This lucrative data has attracted AI-centric companies seeking web links for summarization tasks. Consequently, companies like Perplexity have utilized SerpApi's Google data, leading to Reddit suing both SerpApi and Perplexity for data extraction via Google's results.
Google mirrors Reddit's stance, asserting that this legal action protects not only its own interests but also those of the websites in its index. A blog post from Google highlighted how SerpApiās activities could undermine the rights and preferences of websites and content rightsholders regarding who accesses their data.
Interestingly, Google has an arrangement with Reddit, allowing data inflow into its Gemini system, often leading to Reddit pages appearing in chatbot outputs. Google emphasizes its adherence to 'industry-standard crawling protocols' to compile its SERPs, noting that these site owners didnāt consent to SerpApiās further scraping activity. Thus, while the lawsuit could be seen as upholding the rights of web publishers, it also clearly protects Googleās commercial interests.