Website Scraping Software(s)

[Destined]

Hi Fastlaners,

I am taking massive action as usual and working with my developer on creating a scraper software which I plan on selling eventually. My question is this, is it against the law to create a software that scrapes sites such as google. Can a software be created to scrape sites like these and yet not get bothered by google or other huge authority sites? Does google or other huge authority sites have a policy that their data cannot be scraped?

Also, I have checked out the competition and my software does similar things that their software does, can i get sued by them? I am sure probably not, but I wanted your opinions....

Thank you

 

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[Whole Paradigm]

It's against their TOS I'm sure. If it's against their TOS you can be sued I believe. See here for Twitter latest attack on developers. Granted, they were focusing more on the encouragement of spam, but I believe the act of ignoring their TOS was an issue as well.

Additionally,

Scrape software is in abundance. What would be different about yours? You say it will be similar which may not be good enough. What's your USP?

 

[Eskil]

For one, using proxies would be a must if you want to avoid getting caught. But either way it may all catch up with you somehow if you are basically re-selling scraped data. Maybe there are some legal loopholes.
A friend of mine created Ubot. Might want to check how that works.

 

[Destined]

Thanks for the replies. So If I sold a software that scrapes google and its results, then it is against their TOS? There are so many softwares on the internet that scrapes data from google for seo purposes, how do they stay in business if a lawsuit is possible?

 

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[jaywolf]

So If I sold a software that scrapes google and its results, then it is against their TOS?

I'm pretty sure if you sold software that scrapes google and its results it's against their TOS, just think about it logically. Now, as for other businesses staying in business if "lawsuits are possible", if you look closely, you just answered your own question. Lawsuits are POSSIBLE, not guaranteed, and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) as long as you are NOT being sued, you're still in business...

Look, the point is: If you scrape Google's data and they send lawyers after you, there's always the chance that you could be shut down, simply due to the fact you will not be able to keep up with the legal costs of litigation that Google will be able to with their billions of dollars in profit yearly. WILL they sue you? Unlikely, unless you're making big waves doing something with your scraping software, which again, is unlikely.

 

[LightHouse]

The problem here, is you wont make any money. There are tons of products that scrape google and tons of other sites already. Then there is free software, that enables anyone to scrape anything. What is the point? I wouldn't want to be in business with something you know is against TOS of another company, all your work will get shut down and you will be back to square 1 or worse, in a lawsuit.

 

[Destined]

Thanks for all the replies, although the softwares I had in mind can make me some good money, being sued could wipe me out and I don't want to deal with that.

 

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[AgonI]

there are tons of scraping softwares out there, I have experience with a couple of them. I truly think that adding one more web scraping software is unneccessary because the ones that are available have all the features users need. As far as it being against TOS of google, I wouldn't care much about that. Google has bigger problems/things to deal with, than a web scraping software