Comment by lurking_swe
2 months ago
requiring me to explicitly opt-out of something is NOT the same thing as getting my consent. So your argument breaks down there.
You know what getting my consent would look like? Google hosting a form where i can tell them PLEASE SCRAPE MY WEBSITE and include it in your search results. That is what consent looks like.
Google has never asked for my consent. Yet they expect others to behave by different rules.
Now where google may have a reasonable case is that google scrapes with the intention of offering the data “for free”. SerpAPI does not.
> You know what getting my consent would look like? Google hosting a form where i can tell them PLEASE SCRAPE MY WEBSITE and include it in your search results. That is what consent looks like.
Just for anybody wondering, they have always had such a form as well. Apart from their general crawling.
It's never been the case that if you put something into public, then you get to reserve your right to refuse public access. Either it's public and strangers can look at it. Or it's private and you need to implement a gate.