united-states internet software
Would there be anything wrong with writing a program to pull Google Flights data?
<p>I live in Florida, U.S. and I would like to write a program (for personal use) which searches the Google Flights site for cheap flights. I am a beginner at programming so I have no idea if there are likely to be any issues with this. I tried looking through the terms of service and didn't find anything that I thought was prohibitive.</p>

<p>One thing I thought might be an issue is the number searches/minute, but I again didn't find anything about that.</p>

<p>Contrary to the other answers, Googles Terms of Use state:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Don’t misuse our Services. For example, don’t interfere with our Services or try to access them using a method other than the interface and the instructions that we provide.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en</a></p>

<p>Google withdrew the Flights API in April 2018, leaving the website as the only public access for the data.</p>

<p>Given the wording in the general Google Terms of Service and the withdrawal of API support, it’s highly likely that scraping this data could be viewed as a breach of those terms as you are not accessing the web UI as intended.</p>

<p>I think it's fine. But make sure your program doesn't result in a too high ratio searches/minute that it "overwhelms" the server, since the host might perceive it as a DOS (Denial-Of-Service) attack.</p>

<p>Yes, it's legal. Showing attribution might be a very good idea.</p>

<p>They will probably have an API (application programming interface) that you can use to gather data from Google Flights.</p>

<p>As for that, the concepts of a DoS attack would be furiously opening connections or sending more than requests can possibly be.</p>

<p>As for Vlggers, he says that it might "overwhelm the server". Google is less likely to be overwhelmed. It's got high connection speeds (and I mean more than even 10Gbps), along with fast processors (not just the average Intel) of a rather high clock speed.</p>
