Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's not scraping static text in order to point you to those sites, it's using the features of the site to perform a service better than you can do yourself. It's completely different.

If I made a site that claimed to help you with your math homework and simply sent the queries to WolframAlpha, that would also not just be "scraping."



This is basically what Google does to Wikipedia and rebrands as "Knowledge Graph".


Google has donated many millions to the Wikimedia Foundation, basically in payment for this.

(But, again, there's a difference between scraping and echoing a request on another site and waiting for its response. The latter is basically unauthorized use of its API, not scraping.)


It'll be very telling if Google switches to using Wikipedia Enterprise: https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-finally-asking-big-tec...

My guess is Google's "donation" is pennies on the dollar from what they benefit from Wikipedia, and more of a token gesture than anything else.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: