[appsonify]

how would you feel if somebody took your product you spent years on, slapped their own logo and started selling it? Intellectual theft is theft regardless....and here you are justifying it. WOW.

are you seriously defending OP's operation? Even when its questionable at best ethically? Google doesn't want people using their search results to make money off of it. If they did, they would release it like Bing API. I'm sure you can see why this would be worthy of Google's attention and why enforcement of such rules is necessary. Otherwise, spamming marketers would easily exploit something like serp api, you are not foolin anybody.

In any case, I saved OP from an even bigger financial ruin. He might just get off with a cease & desist letter. It depends on how much revenue he generated using Google's product without licensing. It's clear OP found out about 3taps vs craigslist, a heavily debated ruling on HN, just today.

Just because Google is a monopoly, doesn't justify civil disobedience here, which seems to be what some are arguing for.