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...and everybody was shocked! Absolutely shocked.
Shocked? You'd think all the people outraged at having their websites scraped would be delighted. That's probably the real reason for this.
It's not the scraping itself, but the purpose of the scraping, that can be problematic. There are good reasons for public sites to allow scraping.
I have the distinct impression that a number of people would object to the purpose of re-hosting their content as part of a commercial service, especially one run by Google.
Anyway, now no one has to worry about Google helping people bypass their robots.txt or IP-blocks or whatever counter-measures they take. And Google doesn't have to worry about being sued. Next stop: The Wayback Machine.