What is it about these new big-data, mobile-centric, paradigm-shifting companies and their high testosterone levels?
First we had months and months of public bickering between ride-share giant Uber and arch-rival Lyft.
Now it s time for a smackdown in the world of online real estate listings.
In a post on GeekWire, Blair Hanley Frank reports on the latest fisticuffs:
In a filing made public today, Zillow accused Realtor.com operator Move, Inc. of scraping the listing data from its website in a new court filing today, as part of an ongoing feud between the two companies. David Beitel, Zillow s chief technology officer, said in the declaration that Zillow s tech team detected requests for information from its website earlier this month that matched an automated scraping program.
The Zillow.com content that was accessed included search results covering every State, as well as Puerto Rico and Guam, Beitel said. Indeed, the intrusiveness of the application was such that it was averaging approximately 36,000 data requests to the Zillow.com website each day.
Those requests were traced back to an IP address that – according to Zillow – belongs to , a division of Move that s based in British Columbia. Zillow blocked further access from that address, but Beitel said that it would be a relatively simple matter for a party interested in connecting to the site to do so through a different IP address.
Chris Crocker
And this latest salvo comes after Zillow was accused of pulling the same shenanigans:
That accusation comes in response to a claim that Zillow to benchmark its own listings levied in a letter written by former Zillow executive Chris Crocker and submitted to the court by Move. In a declaration filed with the court, Crocker, who anonymously to Move, said in a declaration today that he didn t want to be identified because he feared retaliation by Zillow.
In his declaration, he doubled down on his claims, saying that what he wrote was based on personal observation and experiences and doesn t contain any trade secrets, despite .
And there s more!
Crocker s letter also included other accusations about conduct on the part of Zillow Chief Industry Development Officer Errol Samuelson and Vice President of Industry Development Curt Beardsley, who are named defendants in this case. Both men have filed declarations denying the claims against them, which include accusations that Beardsley stole databases from Move in order to benefit Zillow.
So what sayeth Zillow?
Not much, apparently.
We have taken appropriate legal action to address this situation based on the facts, Zillow spokesperson Katie Curnutte said in a statement emailed to GeekWire.
And if you re really interested in knowing why and how these various online services differ in terms of the listings they serve up, check out this report on Quora.
Credit: SiliconBeat.com
