Google sues web scraper for pretending to be fake people
Google claims SerpApi masked millions of automated queries per day, and made them appear as if they were coming from real people using real browsers.
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Google has filed a lawsuit against SerpApi, accusing it of doing the digital equivalent of sneaking into Google Search with a fake mustache and stealing everything not nailed down.
According to the complaint, Google says SerpApi has been automatically scraping Google’s search results “at an astonishing scale” and then selling that data to customers.
Google claims this wasn’t just casual copy-and-paste behavior. It was industrial-grade scraping, allegedly carried out using deceptive tactics designed to look like normal human searches.
This isn’t SerpApi’s first courtroom appearance, either. Back in October, Reddit sued SerpApi and two other scraping firms, accusing at least one of funneling Reddit content to the AI startup Perplexity.
Google’s lawsuit politely nods at that case but avoids directly pointing fingers at AI bots or Perplexity. This time, the beef is strictly about Search.
At the heart of Google’s complaint is something called SearchGuard, a protective measure rolled out earlier this year to block SerpApi from accessing Google Search results.
According to Google, SearchGuard worked briefly. Then SerpApi allegedly figured out how to sneak around it.
Google claims SerpApi masked hundreds of millions of automated queries per day, making them appear as if they were coming from real people using real browsers.
SerpApi’s founder reportedly described the process as creating “fake browsers” spread across many IP addresses, essentially a very large, very busy army of pretend humans Googling things nonstop.
Why does Google care so much? Because it says, Search results aren’t just blue links.
They include a “substantial” amount of copyrighted material, images, snippets, and content displayed in features like the Knowledge Panel.
Google argues it pays licensing fees to show that content, while SerpApi allegedly resells it without paying a dime.
Google is now asking the court to shut SerpApi down for bypassing its defenses and to destroy any scraping tech involved.
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