There are those who say that Google is a parasite that profits off the rest of the internet, displaying copyrighted content of others and managing to sell ads for the privilege. Of course, the people who say these things are quickly slapped down, by folks citing how, without Google, nobody would find those web pages anyway, and Google is doing them a great service.
I have to note that this sort of data scraping shown here, by Google, with no incentive left for anybody to actually travel to the original source web pages, seems to make the first groups case much, much, stronger.
I believe that once you publish data (particularly data, but even other kinds of information) on a public, indexed web page, you automatically relinquish control over how it will be used.
That's just reality, and it's also the most profitable way to view online published data, from a global perspective. It is better for all of us if the act of publishing data on the web grants an automatic licence to the downloader to mash it up any way he sees fit. The alternative scenario, where you have to ask for permission for every bit of data, is frightening.
Just because it's "big Google" who is doing the mash-up doesn't make it less ethical than if it was some start-up coming out with a new product (or, say, Wolfram Alpha).
I would submit that just because it's 'big Google' who is doing the mash-up doesn't make it MORE ethical, either.
Mash-ups are ethical only as long as they provide more money in the pockets of the people you are stealing content from. If they do that, fine. If they aren't, your mash-ups are not ethical, and neither are Google's..
No, you're missing my point completely. I'm saying that it doesn't matter whether or not you line the pockets of the people who produced and published the initial data on the web. If it's published on the web on a public site, it is available for anyone to use.
Particularly when it's factual data, rather than, say, an article. You might recall that the copyright acts do not protect factual data.
But there is what's legal, and there is what's ethical. If I traveled around the country, measuring the heights of roller coasters for my website rollercoasterheights.com, I did it to get people to come to my site. If that information is harvested from my site and displayed elsewhere, I've done a lot of work for nothing.
I suspect that instead of those, there might be more creative solutions.
I'm envisioning consultants, like SEO folks, but these are WDO folks. (Web Data Obfuscation). Web Data Obfuscation is the term I just made up for structuring your web page so Google couldn't scrape it easily. The page would still appear in the google index, as that is a benefit to you, so you would make available enough data to be indexed, but not enough to be usefully scraped.
I have to note that this sort of data scraping shown here, by Google, with no incentive left for anybody to actually travel to the original source web pages, seems to make the first groups case much, much, stronger.