Scraping is a lot more dicey than using an official API. Why did Google enter that partnership? They have the data in their index. The only conceivable reason is that they prefer to pay Reddit to avoid the risk of litigating it and ending up with some unfavorable precedent.
There's more than just the data you see remember, the data you don't see is also valuable. The DM's, the deleted posts, advertisingID's that link people to their accounts, and to their alt accounts, etc.
Avoid litigation and possibly of getting some injunction. And on other hand money can go to fund Reddit litigating others. As now they have proven someone paid so they could stop others using data. Slowing them down in process. And the sum is peanuts for Google, they waste that amount regularly...
