Google scraper released

No, not a new tool from Google, but an attempted rebellion from Google-Watch founder Daniel Brandt, who has released the source code of a tool that will be able users to download Google search results directly to their websites.

Already a practice in some areas of SEO, search engine scraping has a general perception of being a “spammy” way to add content to websites for ranking purposes. However, Daniel claims his intention in releasing the tool is to “clarify” copyright issues.

As reported in the somewhat over-titled article An open source Google - without the ads:

” Google took people’s free stuff and made a $50 billion business from it.”

“The commercialization of the web became possible only because tens of thousands of noncommercial sites made the web interesting in the first place,” he writes. “All search engines should make a stable, bare-bones, ad-free, easy-to-scrape version of their results available for those who want to set up nonprofit repeaters. Even if it cuts into their ad profits slightly, there’s no easier way to give back some of what they stole from us.”