Legal & TOS Landscape

Legal & TOS Landscape
Google Maps TOS
"Customer will not export, extract, or otherwise scrape Google Maps Content for use outside the Services."
This is a contractual prohibition, not criminal statute. Breach of contract, not a crime.
Google v. SerpAPI (Dec 2025 — Ruling Pending)
Filed: December 19, 2025, N.D. California (Case No. 4:25-cv-10826)
Google's DMCA Claims
Access circumvention (17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A)): SerpAPI circumvented SearchGuard "on billions of separate occasions." $200-$2,500 per violation.
Trafficking in circumvention tools (17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2)): Marketing services to bypass SearchGuard.
SerpAPI's requests increased "25,000%" over two years — hundreds of millions daily.
SerpAPI's Defense (Motion to Dismiss, Feb 2026)
Google doesn't own copyright to third-party search content
SearchGuard protects business model, not copyrighted works
"Google's entire business began with a web crawler that copied the content"
Hearing: May 19, 2026 before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — ruling not yet published.
Industry impact: If Google prevails, rank tracking, competitive intelligence, and SEO analytics could become legally untenable.
Key Legal Precedents
Case
Year
Impact
Van Buren v. US
2021
CFAA limited to insiders. ToS violations are not computer crime
hiQ v. LinkedIn
2022
Public data scraping doesn't violate CFAA (Ninth Circuit, reaffirmed)
X Corp v. Bright Data
2023
Platforms can't claim copyright on user-generated content
Meta v. Bright Data
2024
Logged-out users haven't accepted ToS — no contract breach
Key shift: Google abandoned CFAA arguments (neutered for public data) for DMCA anti-circumvention claims — targeting SearchGuard bypass specifically.
US vs. EU
United States
Public data scraping generally legal (CFAA precedent)
ToS violations = contract, not criminal
CAN-SPAM for outreach from scraped data
European Union
GDPR: public availability does NOT equal lawful basis (Article 6)
Names, phones, reviewer profiles = personal data
Need legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) for B2B
Must provide opt-out, honor right to be forgotten
Penalties: up to 20M EUR or 4% global turnover
EU AI Act enforcement: August 2026
Risk by Method
Method
Legal Risk
TOS Violation
DMCA Exposure
Official Places API
None
No
No
Data marketplace purchase
Low
No (you didn't scrape)
No
Commercial platforms
Medium
Yes
Indirect
Open-source scrapers
Medium
Yes
Low
SERP API proxies
High
Yes
Active lawsuit
Reverse-engineered APIs
Highest
Yes
Circumvention
Enforcement Reality
Survey of 40-50 agencies scraping Maps at scale: zero cease-and-desist letters. Google relies on technical countermeasures for most scrapers, reserving legal action for large commercial operations (SerpAPI).
Sources
IPWatchdog — Google Sues SerpAPI
SerpAPI Motion to Dismiss
Is Scraping Google Maps Legal?