December 19, 2025
Scrape Wars: Pot vs. Kettle
Why we're taking legal action against SerpApi's unlawful scraping
Commenters scream “pot, kettle!” and beg for a real Google API
TLDR: Google sued SerpApi for allegedly bypassing defenses and reselling data from Search, but commenters blasted Google as hypocritical and demanded a real search API. The thread’s core fight: who gets to scrape, what counts as “malicious,” and who actually controls the web’s content—platforms or users.
Google says it’s suing SerpApi for sneaking past defenses and reselling licensed content pulled from Search. But the internet’s instant verdict? Hypocrisy alert. The top comment calls it “the pot calling the kettle black,” pointing to Google’s own scraping for search indexing and its AI features that summarize others’ work. Another crowd favorite: if Google just shipped a proper search results API, SerpApi “wouldn’t even be a thing.” Ouch.
Fans of SerpApi argue it simply gives people a machine-readable way to see what Google shows anyway—something Google refuses to offer. Skeptics ask the zinger of the day: what’s the difference between scraping and malicious scraping? Is it about volume, intent, or just who owns the lawyers? The vibe is popcorn-worthy. One commenter drops a meme-y yoink—“that’s the ladder being yanked up”—suggesting Google climbed the web with scraping, then pulled up the ladder behind them.
For context: Google says SerpApi cloaks bots, hammers sites, and bypasses rules, grabbing data Google claims it licenses (like images and real-time info) and resells it. The community, though, smells a platform power play. The hot take trifecta: hypocrisy, missing APIs, and fuzzy definitions. Drama level: trending hotter than a 1 AM Hacker News dogpile.
Key Points
- •Google filed a lawsuit against SerpApi alleging unlawful scraping and circumvention of security measures protecting copyrighted content in Google Search results.
- •Google claims to follow industry-standard crawling protocols and honor websites’ directives, while SerpApi allegedly overrides these directives.
- •SerpApi is accused of using cloaking, large bot networks, and fake, frequently changing crawler names to evade Google’s protections.
- •Google alleges SerpApi takes content that Google licenses (e.g., Knowledge Panel images, real-time Search data) and resells it for a fee.
- •Google states it uses significant technical protections and resorts to legal action as a last step; similar actions against SerpApi have been taken by other websites.