But now, the same search is not free anymore and on top of thats its bloody expensive ($5 for 1000 queries). Is there any alternative (I don't know why I am asking this question, I know the answer already. There are none.) I personally feel that Google's data belongs to public as much as it belongs to Google. Its the public which has made it so valuable.

Obvisouly I do not see a problem if they charge for commercial usage but they should not restrict its usage for the opensource and freely distributed software. In fact such usage will only enrich the search data further.

Interesting links: https://developers.google.com/web-search/docs/ https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview