Reddit mulls ending $60M Google data deal as AI Overviews tank traffic

Reddit is weighing whether to renew its $60 million（約96億円）-per-year data licensing agreement with Google, a 2024 deal that gave the search giant access to Reddit's vast repository of conversational posts and human opinions to train AI models. The reconsideration is driven by evidence that Google's AI Overviews feature—which displays AI-generated summaries directly on search result pages—has caused referral traffic to plummet across the media industry.

Between June 2025 and June 2026, the impact was severe: USA Today saw organic Google search traffic from US users fall by nearly half, Politico dropped 23%, CNN fell 25%, and Business Insider lost over 85%. The mechanism is straightforward. According to Chartbeat reporting from March 2026, when an AI summary appears on a query page, click-through rates to original sources plunge by roughly 60% because users find answers directly in Google's search results. For publishers who depend on search referrals for revenue, this dynamic is catastrophic. For Reddit, which supplies the data that powers these summaries, renewing the agreement would mean continuing to subsidize a system that hurts traffic to its peers and potentially its own content.

Reddit's leverage extends beyond the Google relationship. The platform already maintains a $70 million（約110億円）-per-year deal with OpenAI entered in May 2024, which integrates real-time forum content into ChatGPT and uses OpenAI models to power native features like Reddit Answers. Reddit has also taken legal action, suing Perplexity for allegedly illegally scraping forum data using third-party vendors like SerpApi and Oxylabs to circumvent crawling restrictions. These moves position Reddit as protective of its data asset.

Reddit is not alone in reconsidering its relationship with Google. Politico's internal teams have discussed revoking Google's access to free articles by implementing registration walls, while Reuters is weighing whether to block crawling for its consumer-facing news products as audience numbers decline. The regulatory environment is also shifting: in early June, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority ordered Google to allow web publishers to opt out of AI summaries without losing their positioning in traditional search results. Google has nine months to enforce this ruling. Currently, publishers face a binary choice—allow Google bots to crawl for both traditional search and AI training, or block the Googlebot entirely and lose search visibility. The CMA's order, if enforced, would break that link and give publishers real leverage to refuse their data for AI summaries while remaining discoverable in search. This confluence of traffic losses, legal precedent, and regulatory intervention is reshaping the calculus for Reddit and other content owners deciding whether their data licensing deals remain worth renewing.

Reddit's reconsideration of its Google data deal reflects a broader tension now engulfing publisher-AI company relationships. The platform has been extraordinarily valuable to AI firms because it contains billions of conversational posts and human opinions organized into specialized communities. Yet as Google's AI Overviews feature has grown, the very data that makes Reddit attractive to AI companies has begun to cannibalize the referral traffic that sustains publishers. The Wall Street Journal's traffic data between June 2025 and June 2026 shows this dynamic plainly: USA Today lost half its organic Google search traffic, while Business Insider lost over 85%. A Chartbeat report from March 2026 quantified the mechanism—when an AI summary appears on a query page, click-through rates for original sources drop roughly 60%.

Reddit's position is uniquely leveraged: it already has a separate $70 million（約110億円）-per-year deal with OpenAI (entered in May 2024) and has sued Perplexity for allegedly scraping its data illegally. These multiple revenue streams and enforcement actions suggest Reddit views its data as a strategic asset. Other publishers—Politico, USA Today, and Reuters—are following a similar path, considering whether to restrict Google's access or implement registration walls to protect their audience. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has already intervened, ordering Google to allow publishers to opt out of AI summaries without penalty by mid-2026. This regulatory pressure, combined with visible traffic losses, creates strong incentives for Reddit and peers to renegotiate or walk away.

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