Comment by xnx
19 hours ago
> Because direct licensing isn’t available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results
Crazy for a company to admit: "Google won't let us whitelabel their core product so we steal it and resell it."
Seems like an open question as to whether that violates any laws.
Another way to look at it is that if you publish a service on the web, you have limited rights to restrict what people do with it.
Isn't that the logic Google search relies on in the first place? I didn't give permission for Google to crawl and index and deep link to my site (let alone summarize and train LLMs on it). They just did it anyway, because it's on a public website.
Google's stance is "I can copy you and you can't stop me" as well as "You can't copy me, I'll sue you"
Google at least claims that noindex will keep your site from getting crawled [1]. Do people think this is false?
[1] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...
Maybe it has changed but Google doesn't look like it uses litigation as its primary weapon. It defends itself but rarely attacks.
The are however more than happy to use technical measures, like blocking accounts. And because of their position, blocking your Google account may be more damaging than a successful lawsuit.
What's the alternative? Building a competing search index as a relative nobody on the web is very difficult, from the outset, and is made more difficult from sites taking extra measures to stop bots in general now.
Google's crawler is given special privileges in this right and can bypass basically all bot checks. Anyone else has to just wade through the mud and accept they can't index much of the web.
Crying to Big Daddy Government because those other mean companies won't give away their secret sauce is pretty lame and doesn't make me want to reinscribe.
Pretty standard business practice though. There's no ethics in making money.
Is it much different than what Google AI Summaries do?
Even the article posted (and search itself) has Google IP address.
But in this current climate, they can admit it and then dare Google to tell them to stop... After Google has just had an antitrust ruling against it for dominating the search market.
Google doesn't really have a leg to stand on and they know it.
Strange to pick on Kagi when there's much bigger companies on that list.
Those companies allegedly have used SerpAPI (probably to check visibility), but not to resell a Google Search knock-off.
> knock-off
Is it though? It feels so better than Google results[1], while being still built partly with Google results.
In the last 3 years as a Kagi customer i have rarely if ever felt the need to use bangs !g and on few occasions i did use them, it was with instant regret.
In the previous decade or so using DDG, using bangs !g Google would be 30-50% of searches, i would have to consciously try the results first instead of starting with !g and then think to myself DDG was at least getting the query data to improve their results.
[1] While the de-cluttered UI is a relief, on just the results list comparison, Google search is so bad that less time saved in not redrafting the queries constantly, filtering out the spam, the AI summaries, sponsored content, all the "cards" , recommended search listicles on is worth more than the $10/month.
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