On Friday, Google announced it had filed a lawsuit (PDF) against SerpApi for scraping the Google search results. Google alleges that SerpApi is running an "unlawful" operation that bypasses Google’s security measures to scrape search results at an astonishing scale.
Google called SerpApi's "business model is parasitic," adding "SerpApi uses automated means to scrape these other services." This generates "billions of artificial requests and then copying and selling the responses. SerpApi does not compensate the services it scrapes for the output or for the costs of responding to the massive burdens their automated processes impose on the services’ computer infrastructures. Its scraping invariably violates the services’ governing agreements and flouts access restrictions that those services convey to automated crawlers or “bots” through robots.txt instructions," Google wrote.
Google claims SerpApi uses hundreds of millions of fake search requests to mimic human behavior. This allows them to bypass CAPTCHAs and other automated defenses that Google uses to prevent bots from overwhelming its systems.
SerpApi sells a "Google Search API" to third parties. Google argues this is deceptive because Google does not offer a public search API for this type of data. SerpApi is essentially selling a back door to Google’s proprietary search engine.
Google argues that its security systems (like SearchGuard) are "technological measures" that control access to copyrighted work. By bypassing them, SerpApi is allegedly violating Section 1201 of the DMCA. Google claims SerpApi is violating Google’s Terms of Service, which strictly prohibit automated scraping and the use of proxies to hide one's identity. Google alleges that SerpApi is profiting from Google’s massive investment in organizing the world’s information without contributing to the ecosystem or respecting the rules.
"Google estimates that SerpApi sends hundreds of millions of artificial search requests each day to Google. Over the last two years, that volume has increased by as much as 25,000%," Google said.
Google knows SerpApi cannot afford to pay Google damages from the lawsuit. Google wrote, "Google is entitled to recover from SerpApi the actual damages Google has suffered because of SerpApi’s statutory violations as well as any additional, non-duplicative profits SerpApi has earned from them. Google may alternatively elect to recover statutory damages of no less than $200 and as much as $2,500 for each of SerpApi’s many statutory violations."
"Google’s harm will not be remedied by a statutory damages award because SerpApi will be unable to pay it. SerpApi reportedly earns a few million dollars in annual revenue, but already faces liability that is orders of magnitude higher and growing," Google wrote.
This is an interesting lawsuit for the SEO industry to follow...
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