Is This Correct? Google Sues to Protect Copyright

December 30, 2025

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

This headline stopped me in my tracks: “Google Lawsuit Says Data Scraping Company Uses Fake Searches to Steal Web Content.” The way my dinobaby brain works, I expect to see a publisher taking the world’s largest online advertising outfit in the crosshairs. But I trust Thomson Reuters because they tell me they are the trust outfit.

Google apparently cannot stop a third party from scraping content from its Web site. Is this SEO outfit operating at a level of sophistication beyond the ken of Mandiant, Gemini, and the third-party cyber tools the online giant has? Must be I guess. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.

The alleged copyright violator in this case seems to be one of those estimable, highly professional firms engaged in search engine optimization. Those are the folks Google once saw as helpful to the sale of advertising. After all, if a Web site is not in a Google search result, that Web site does not exist. Therefore, to get traffic or clicks, the Web site “owner” can buy Google ads and, of course, make the Web site Google compliant. Maybe the estimable SEO professional will continue to fiddle and doctor words in a tireless quest to eliminate the notion of relevance in Google search results.

Now an SEO outfit is on the wrong site of what Google sees as the law. The write up says:

Google on Friday [December 19, 2025] sued a Texas company that “scrapes” data from online search results, alleging it uses hundreds of millions of fake Google search requests to access copyrighted material and “take it for free at an astonishing scale. The lawsuit against SerpApi, filed in federal court in California, said the company bypassed Google’s data protections to steal the content and sell it to third parties.

To be honest the phrase “astonishing scale” struck me as somewhat amusing. Google itself operates on “astonishing scale.” But what is good for the goose is obviously not good for the gander.

I asked You.com to provide some examples of people suing Google for alleged copyright violations. The AI spit out a laundry list. Here are four I sort of remembered:

News Outlets & Authors v. Google (AI Training Copyright Cases)
Google Users v. Google LLC (Privacy/Data Class Action with Copyright Claims)
Advertisers v. Google LLC (Advertising Content Class Action)
Oracle America, Inc. v. Google LLC

My thought is that with some experience in copyright litigation, Google is probably confident that the SEO outfit broke the law. I wanted to word it “broke the law which suits Google” but I am not sure that is clear.

Okay, which company will “win.” An SEO firm with resources slightly less robust than Google’s or Google?

Place your bet on one of the online gambling sites advertising everywhere at this time. Oh, Google permits online gambling ads in areas allowing gambling and with appropriate certifications, licenses, and compliance functions.

I am not sure what to make of this because Google’s ability to filter, its smart software, and its security procedures obviously are either insufficient, don’t work, or are full of exploitable gaps.

Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Copyright, Google, Legal matters, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.