According to The Verge, Google has filed a lawsuit against SerpApi, a company that provides tools for scraping web content including Google’s own search results. The lawsuit, filed in January 2025, accuses SerpApi of violating the Copyright Act by using “deceptive means” to automatically access Google’s results “at an astonishing scale” before selling that data. Google claims SerpApi developed a way to circumvent its SearchGuard technology, which was deployed earlier in January 2025 specifically to block SerpApi. The method involves masking hundreds of millions of daily automated queries to appear as if they come from human users, a process SerpApi’s founder described as “creating fake browsers using a multitude of IP addresses.” Google argues this undermines its investments in licensed content and asks the court to order SerpApi to stop and destroy its circumvention technology.
The arms race gets real
Here’s the thing: this lawsuit isn’t just about one company. It’s the latest, most direct shot in a rapidly escalating war over who controls—and can profit from—the public web. Google deploying a specific tech (SearchGuard) to block a specific actor (SerpApi), only to have that actor engineer a workaround within the same month, shows how advanced this cat-and-mouse game has become. We’re past simple robots.txt files. This is about sophisticated deception at a massive, industrial scale.
It’s not just about search results
Google’s legal argument is fascinating. They’re leaning hard on the idea that their search results pages contain a “substantial” amount of copyrighted content—think images and text in features like the Knowledge Panel—which they license. By scraping and reselling this, SerpApi is essentially free-riding on Google’s content investments. It’s a clever angle. It frames the fight not as Google protecting its secret sauce, but as Google protecting the copyrighted works of its partners. That’s a much stronger position in court.
The bigger AI-shaped picture
And let’s not ignore the elephant in the room: AI training data. The Verge notes that Reddit also sued SerpApi in October, alleging scraped data ended up with AI startup Perplexity. Google’s complaint mentions Reddit’s suit but pointedly doesn’t name Perplexity or AI. Why? Probably because they don’t need to for this case. But the implication is clear. The frantic scraping of the entire web, often through middlemen like SerpApi, is largely fueled by the insatiable data hunger of the AI industry. This lawsuit is a frontline battle in that larger war. If data is the new oil, then scrapers are the drill rigs, and the landowners are now putting up serious fences.
What happens next
So what does this mean? For one, the precedent set here will be huge. If Google wins a decisive victory, it could empower every major platform to lock down their data with similar technical and legal force. But can they really stop it? The core technique SerpApi describes—simulating human browsers—is basically the foundation of a lot of modern web automation. It’s a game of whack-a-mole. Google might shut down SerpApi, but the demand for this data isn’t going away. The pressure will just find another outlet, another clever tool. This lawsuit, detailed in their legal filing and blog post, is a major salvo. But it’s unlikely to be the last. The web is being pulled in two directions: one that’s open and indexable, and one that’s gated and proprietary. We’re watching that tension snap.
