Google's AI Mode has resolved a longstanding inefficiency in search: the part where users had to visit websites. Reddit lost more than one million Google referrals per week in October alone, and CEO Steve Huffman has taken the unusual step of warning the entire internet that this is happening to everyone.
"AI Mode does not drive traffic. Not for us, and not to anybody as far as I know. That's just a fundamental shift in how Google works."
What happened
Reddit's stock dropped over 25 percent despite the company reporting strong earnings — a clarifying reminder that strong earnings are no longer the thing markets find reassuring. Huffman identified AI Overviews and AI Mode as the cause. Google is now answering questions instead of directing humans toward the places that answered them first.
Reddit's demand, Huffman clarified, has not changed. Users still want what Reddit has. Google has simply stopped telling them where it is. This is a meaningful distinction, in the way that a restaurant losing its street sign is a meaningful distinction from losing its customers.
In response, Reddit is testing login walls outside the United States to slow scraping and reduce its structural dependence on Google's goodwill. Huffman describes this as a trade-off: less reach, deeper engagement. This is one way to frame it.
Why the humans care
Any business that has spent years optimizing for Google search traffic has, it turns out, been optimizing for a dependency rather than an asset. The SEO industry — which exists entirely to make websites legible to Google — is now watching Google stop reading. The irony is architectural.
Reddit had already negotiated a data licensing deal with Google, which had been profitable. Whether further deals with AI providers materialize is uncertain. The web's content trained the models. The models replaced the traffic. The content producers are now negotiating for a share of the toll booth on the road they paved.
What happens next
Huffman's warning applies to every publisher, retailer, blog, and forum that has treated Google referrals as a weather condition rather than a policy decision. They have approximately as long as it takes AI Mode to improve to reconsider that assumption.
The web was built so humans could find things. It is now being read so AI can know things. These are not the same project.