Reddit eyes blocking Google AI as publisher traffic collapses

Reddit is preparing to sever Google’s access to its content for artificial intelligence training, sending its shares down 9% on Wednesday. The move comes as a $60 million annual licensing deal signed in 2024 nears its end. Rather than renewing at a flat rate, Reddit executives want any new contract priced by actual usage.

The conflict centres on Google’s AI Overviews, which summarise answers directly at the top of search pages. Users frequently read the summary without clicking through to the source. Because Reddit sells advertisements against the visitors Google traditionally sends, these missed clicks represent a direct hit to its revenue model.

Reddit is far from alone in this predicament. Major outlets including Reuters, The Economist, Politico and USA Today are all reviewing their relationships with the search giant. The financial pain is acute: referral traffic from Google fell 23% at Politico and 25% at CNN between June 2025 and June 2026. Business Insider suffered an 85% drop over the same period.

Independent research indicates that click-through rates plummet by a third to a half when an AI Overview appears. “It’s time to take a stand and say enough is enough,” said USA Today chief executive Mike Reed. For businesses built on referral traffic, this is not a minor fluctuation but an existential threat to their core revenue stream.

Reddit occupies a paradoxical position in this fight. Chief executive Steve Huffman has called the platform’s conversations “like oil for the modern internet,” and chief financial officer Drew Vollero notes it is the most cited source for large language models, boasting over 25 billion posts. The company is simultaneously a vital supplier to AI systems and a casualty of their deployment, with total content deals worth $203 million at its 2024 float.

Google pushes back against the publisher backlash, insisting it still sends billions of clicks daily and that AI Overviews distribute traffic more broadly. “Search is not a useful product if the web is not a thriving product, and so I think we probably care about that more than any other company in the world,” said Liz Reid, Google’s head of search.

However, regulators are stepping in. Britain’s competition authority has ordered Google to allow publishers to opt out of AI training without penalising their regular search rankings, a rule currently being tested in the UK market.

A Reddit spokesperson said the company is negotiating “just like any business should, by focusing on doing what’s best for Reddit.” Yet the standoff underscores a much larger problem. The two-decade-old arrangement where publishers traded content for traffic is collapsing, and no viable replacement has emerged.