[wolrah]

I have two questions for you then.

First, if you insist that you have not scraped data then can you offer an alternative explanation for the data being presented here?

Second, it's pretty clear that the majority of at least the tech community hates what you do with the regwall. Do you not know how bad your site's behavior makes GIS for those of us who aren't interested in joining it? Or do you just not care?

[notacoward]

I'm guessing that they use one or more third parties that do indeed scrape Google results but provide plausible deniability in the process. And I'd look very closely at the employment histories of principals at those nominal "third" parties. It's not that uncommon in this industry to find companies with exactly one customer, staffed entirely by ex-employees of that one customer.

[shostack]

Interesting. Can you cite any examples if it isn't uncommon?

[mdoms]

I think my comment presents a far more likely scenario than scraping Google search results.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23708642