In article ,
says...
In article . net, Java
Man wrote:

How does that square with your professed ignorance of what Google may
want to keep secret?

What does anything they want to keep secret have to do with aggregating
web sites and news feeds?

----------------
aggregate
noun |?agrigit| |?øgr?g?t| |?agr?g?t|
1 a whole formed by combining several (typically disparate) elements :
the council was an aggregate of three regional assemblies.
€ the total number of points scored by a player or team in a series of
sporting contests : the result put the sides even on aggregate.
2 a material or structure formed from a loosely compacted mass of
fragments or particles.
€ pieces of broken or crushed stone or gravel used to make concrete, or
more generally in building and construction work.
adjective [ attrib. ] |?agrigit| |?agr?g?t|
formed or calculated by the combination of many separate units or
items; total : the aggregate amount of grants made.
€ Botany (of a group of species) comprising several very similar
species formerly regarded as a single species.
€ Economics denoting the total supply or demand for goods and services
in an economy at a particular time : aggregate demand | aggregate
supply.
verb |-?g?t| |?øgr??ge?t| |?agr?ge?t|
form or group into a class or cluster : [ intrans. ] the butterflies
aggregate in dense groups.
PHRASES
in ( the) aggregate in total; as a whole.
DERIVATIVES
aggregation |?agri?g? sh ?n| |?øgr??ge???n| |-?ge??(?)n| noun
aggregative |-?g?tiv| |?øgr??ge?d?v| |?agr?g?t?v| adjective
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin aggregat- Œherded together,¹
from the verb aggregare, from ad- Œtoward¹ + grex, greg- Œa flock.¹
----------------

I hope you didn't Google for that! ;-)

Web spiders to gather page content are a dime a dozen. Capturing and
storing a news feed is trivial.

There is nothing proprietary about aggregating web site content and
news feeds.

IOW, you don't include processing aggregated content as being part of
"aggregating web sites and news feeds"?

Rick