One of the richest sources of information on the internet is re-evaluating its relationship with Google.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal on July 22, people familiar with the matter revealed that the online forum Reddit, which provides content for Google's massive search results, is discussing cutting off the channels through which this technology giant can access its content for AI purposes.
An increasing number of online media companies are expressing dissatisfaction with this tech giant, and Reddit is one of those companies voicing this growing concern. Currently, AI is changing the way people ask questions—not only absorbing search traffic but also disrupting the revenue models of publishers. These companies say that Google's search engine is no longer a reliable source of visitors, especially after Alphabet's Google expanded its AI search capabilities in recent months. USA Today, Politico, The Economist, People Inc., and Reuters are all evaluating how to continue working with Google, and even whether to continue doing so at all.
In 2024, Reddit reached an agreement worth $60 million per year, allowing Google to use its data to train AI models. However, according to people familiar with the matter, Reddit's executives are re-evaluating the value of continuing to provide content to Google, especially as AI-generated answers lead to a decrease in visits to external websites. Currently, negotiations are underway to renew the agreement that is coming up for expiration.
"For certain types of publishers, this is a matter of life and death," said David Buttle, CEO of media consulting firm DJB Strategies. "They are considering more drastic measures."
According to Cloudflare, "automated crawlers" currently account for more than half of all network traffic. Some crawlers extract content from publishers to train their AI models, while others crawl websites in order to help quickly answer user queries or sell the content to other companies. As technology becomes increasingly complex, efforts to block crawlers have become a game of tag teaming. Currently, publishers still allow Google's crawlers to access their sites, as these robots also provide data for Google's AI tools and search functions. For now, publishers generally cannot achieve "targeted blocking"; if one aspect is cut off, the other will also be affected.
USA Today Co. is considering blocking Google’s “crawlers”; the company owns a national newspaper with the same name, as well as hundreds of local publications. If this block is implemented, it means that their content will not appear in Google’s AI summaries, and they will be completely excluded from traditional search results with blue hyperlinks. Data from search analytics company Semrush shows that for the “USA Today” national newspaper, natural Google search traffic from American users decreased by nearly half between June 2025 and June 2026.
"It's time to state our position and stop at a reasonable point," said Mike Reed, CEO of USA Today Co.
He stated that if the decline in search traffic continues, the company is prepared to cut off Google's access at any time, and has already started preparing for the future without Google traffic, which will not generate revenue.
There is also a lawsuit against Google filed by ‘USA Today’. This lawsuit accuses Google of monopolizing the advertising technology field, thereby harming publishers’ advertising revenues.
From June 2025 to June 2026, Google search traffic from American users on the Politico website decreased by 23%, CNN's traffic decreased by approximately 25%, and Business Insider's traffic decreased by more than 85%.
Google responded that its AI search function is "generating billions of clicks per week," and is meeting the ever-evolving needs of users. A Google spokesperson said: "Our AI function identifies web links, aiming to help creators and publishers expand their audience. At the same time, we provide website owners with clear tools to manage their content."
Penske Media, which owns magazines such as Variety and Rolling Stone, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google last September. The lawsuit alleges that Google's AI summary technology illegally copied reports from these publications and reduced online traffic.
Employees at Politico, a subsidiary of Axel Springer, are discussing restrictions on Google and other "crawlers" from accessing their free articles. According to people familiar with the matter, there is a proposal to implement a "registration barrier," requiring real human users to log in before they can read the content.
Similar to Politico, most of Reuters’ revenue comes from its B2B business. Reuters stated that as traffic decreases, the company is also considering whether to block Google’s “crawlers” for its consumer-oriented news products.
"We're of course also calculating this expense as part of our cost-benefit analysis for search and the economic impact of AI summaries," said Paul Bascobert, President of Reuters.
Google stated in June that it would comply with a ruling by UK regulators, allowing publishers to decide for themselves whether to include AI features, without having to sacrifice their visibility in traditional search results. Google claims to be testing this mechanism in the UK first, and then expanding it to global website owners, but has not provided a specific timeline.
Since the decision by the UK regulatory body was made, *The Economic Person* has been actively discussing the possibility of exiting the AI search function.
The question is, should we take this step? What kind of cascading reactions will arise from our decision to act or not act? Josh Muncke, vice president of Generative AI at The Economist, said so. He added that complete detachment from Google is not currently on the agenda. "Google has an undeniable influence," he said. “The flow may fluctuate or decline, but ultimately, it's still just flow.”
Google has extended an offer to news organizations, including a plan to pay more than 200 publishers for access to their content for AI use. Additionally, Google now allows users to select preferred news sources, enabling personalized customization of headlines in search results, which could bring more traffic to these websites.
The former IAC subsidiary, People Inc., has taken a different approach to boosting revenue through events, social media promotion, and expanding its apps. In the first quarter of this year, Google accounted for only 25% of the company’s traffic, compared to over half two years ago. The brand portfolio under People Inc. includes “People,” “Better Homes & Gardens,” and “Travel + Leisure.” Currently, the company is exploring ways to make authorized AI “scrapers” easier to parse for their content. While considering the potential for collaboration between the two parties, Google’s scraping rights have been retained for now.
"Totally cutting off contact and implementing a nationwide lockdown is within our scope of consideration," said People Inc.'s CEO Neil Vogel.
Meanwhile, Time magazine is assisting advertisers in precisely “feeding” marketing information to AI crawlers. They have adopted a strategy similar to that of the Trojan horse—creating plain-text advertisements that are invisible to ordinary readers but can be captured by AI crawlers. The goal is for Google’s AI Overviews and other chatbots that consume large amounts of media content to reference these advertisements when answering users’ questions, thereby helping brands reach potential customers in a targeted manner.
"We are now facing two types of audiences," concluded Mark Howard, chief operating officer of *Time Weekly*. "We're figuring out how to provide the ultimate reading experience for human readers when they visit. But what about 'crawlers,' the AI audience that serves as a secondary category? How should we treat them?"
