“Google and Reddit do not own the Internet," web scraper says after court win
A federal court recently handed a significant loss to Google in its legal battle against SerpApi, a firm that scrapes public search results. Google attempted to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to stop the scraper, claiming the activity violated anti-scraping protections. The presiding judge dismissed the case, ruling that Google lacks standing because it does not own the content appearing in those search results.
Despite this setback, Google maintains its position. The company plans to file an amended complaint, suggesting that its knowledge panels contain licensed content that warrants protection. Legal experts note that this approach puts Google in a difficult position. If the company argues too strongly that its search snippets are copyrighted, it risks facing new legal challenges regarding its own use of third-party content without explicit licenses.
Reddit is pursuing a similar legal strategy against both SerpApi and Perplexity, claiming that these tools scrape content without authorization. However, industry observers point out that Reddit faces the same hurdle as Google. The platforms do not hold the underlying copyrights to much of the data they display, making their reliance on the DMCA a questionable tactic in the eyes of many legal professionals.
This ongoing tension reflects a broader trend in the tech industry. As AI development creates a higher demand for data, platforms are moving to restrict access to information that was once considered public. Critics argue that these companies are attempting to wall off the open web, effectively charging for access to data they did not create. For now, the courts appear skeptical of using copyright law to grant platforms broad ownership over internet traffic.
As the legal process continues, researchers and SEO professionals are watching closely. The outcome of these cases will likely dictate how automated tools interact with public data in the future. While Google prepares to rewrite its arguments, the core question remains whether private platforms can use copyright statutes to gatekeep the public information ecosystem.