Google has filed a lawsuit against Texas-based data scraping company SerpApi, accusing it of illegally collecting and selling Google search results at massive scale.
The lawsuit was filed on Friday in a federal court in California. Google claims SerpApi uses hundreds of millions of fake search requests to bypass Google’s security systems and access copyrighted content without permission.
According to Google, SerpApi allegedly “takes content for free at an astonishing scale” and then sells that data to third parties, including developers and companies building AI-powered tools.
Why Google Is Taking Legal Action
Google says it spends significant resources protecting websites and licensed content that appear in its search results. This includes information displayed in Knowledge Panels, Google Maps, and Google Shopping, much of which comes from licensed partners.
In a statement, Google’s general counsel, Halimah DeLaine Prado, said the company only resorts to legal action when its technical protections are deliberately bypassed.
“When our security protections are circumvented in such a brazen way, as a last resort we take legal action to stop this behavior,” she said.
Google is asking the court for monetary damages and an order that would stop SerpApi from scraping its search results.
SerpApi Responds
SerpApi has denied Google’s claims and says it plans to vigorously defend itself in court.
The company argues that the data it provides is publicly available and can be seen by anyone using a browser without logging into Google.
“We believe this lawsuit is an effort to stifle competition from innovators who rely on our services to build next-generation AI, security, browsers, productivity, and many other applications,” SerpApi said in a statement.
A Growing Fight Over Data Scraping
This isn’t the first time SerpApi has faced legal trouble. In October, Reddit filed a similar lawsuit accusing SerpApi and other scrapers of stealing its content to help train AI systems, including tools linked to AI-powered search engines.
A Reddit spokesperson welcomed Google’s lawsuit, saying that unauthorized scraping turns the openness of the internet against itself.
Although Google’s lawsuit does not mention AI company Perplexity, the case highlights growing tensions between major tech platforms and companies that rely on scraped data to power AI products.
As AI tools continue to grow, lawsuits like this could shape how online data is accessed, licensed, and protected in the future