Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’

Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’

By Emma Roth
Publication Date: 2025-12-19 20:48:00

In an effort to halt this harmful misappropriation and protect its partner relationships, Google developed and deployed a technological measure, known as SearchGuard, that restricts access to its search results pages and the copyrighted content they contain. So that it could continue its free riding, however, SerpApi developed a means of circumventing SearchGuard. With the automated queries it submits, SerpApi engages in a wide variety of misrepresentations and evasions in order to bypass the technological protections Google deployed. But each time it employs these artifices, SerpApi violates federal law…

When SearchGuard launched in January 2025, it effectively blocked SerpApi from accessing Google’s Search results and the copyrighted content of Google’s partners. But SerpApi immediately began working on a means to circumvent Google’s technological protection measure. SerpApi quickly discovered means to do so and deployed them.

SerpApi’s answer to SearchGuard is to mask…