Google Sues SerpApi for Scraping Search Results
December 20, 2025, San Francisco, CA
Google has filed a lawsuit against SerpApi LLC, alleging the company bypassed Google’s security measures to scrape copyrighted content from search results. According to the complaint, SerpApi used IP rotation, bot-mimicking, and other techniques to access and resell search snippets, links, and images—some of which Google licenses from third parties.
The lawsuit cites violations of Google’s Terms of Service and the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, and seeks to stop SerpApi’s activities, destroy circumvention tools, and recover damages.
SerpApi pushed back, telling Reuters that it provides “the same information any person can see in their browser without signing in,” framing the lawsuit as an attempt to stifle competition for developers and AI tools that rely on search data.
The case raises bigger questions for the AI and tech industry: can publicly visible but technically protected content be scraped at scale? And what role does it play in training AI models?
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