As Reddit stock falls, CEO questions value of Google’s AI Overviews

Reddit 股价下跌，CEO 质疑谷歌 AI 概览（AI Overviews）的价值

Like any company, Reddit reports quarterly earnings, and its CEO, Steve Huffman, addresses investors during those reports. It’s not always about just sharing numbers, though: This quarter, Huffman took the opportunity to voice concerns and criticisms about Google’s AI Overviews feature, which automatically summarizes search results on most user queries.

像任何公司一样，Reddit 会发布季度财报，其首席执行官 Steve Huffman 会在财报会议上向投资者发表讲话。不过，这并不总是仅仅关于分享财务数据：在本季度，Huffman 借此机会表达了对谷歌“AI 概览”（AI Overviews）功能的担忧和批评，该功能会自动总结大多数用户查询的搜索结果。

First, there was a letter to investors, wherein Huffman spun his narrative about Reddit’s value proposition and general strategic direction amid the proliferation of AI tools. He wrote: As the internet becomes flooded with synthetic content, people are craving real human perspective. We are the antidote to an automated web. AI compresses the internet into summaries. Reddit delivers the opposite: deep discussions, passionate debates, and lived experiences. People don’t want a summary of Reddit; they want Reddit.

首先，在一封致投资者的信中，Huffman 阐述了在 AI 工具激增的背景下，Reddit 的价值主张和总体战略方向。他写道：“随着互联网充斥着合成内容，人们渴望真实的个人观点。我们是自动化网络的解毒剂。AI 将互联网压缩成摘要，而 Reddit 提供的是截然相反的东西：深入的讨论、激情的辩论和真实的生活体验。人们不需要 Reddit 的摘要，他们想要的是 Reddit 本身。”

The letter also said: As AI makes information more abundant, the challenge is no longer finding content—it’s finding context, personal opinion, and first-hand accounts. Everything online feels flat, polished, generated, or sponsored, so consumers are overwhelmed and increasingly skeptical. We’ve never had more information, but we’ve never trusted it less.

信中还提到：“随着 AI 让信息变得更加丰富，挑战不再是寻找内容，而是寻找背景、个人观点和第一手资料。网上的所有东西看起来都平淡无奇、经过润色、由机器生成或带有赞助性质，因此消费者感到不知所措，且越来越持怀疑态度。我们从未拥有过如此多的信息，但我们对信息的信任度却从未如此之低。”

And then, in comments around the earnings report, he added: What we see is, 10 blue links has driven tremendous value and growth to the broader ecosystem… from where we sit, AI Overviews has yet to make a similar level of positive impact, and I think that’s consistent across the broader landscape, right? As businesses, publishers, retailers, we’re still looking for that win-win.

随后，在财报会议的评论中，他补充道：“我们看到的是，‘10 个蓝色链接’（传统的搜索结果）为更广泛的生态系统带来了巨大的价值和增长……从我们的角度来看，AI 概览尚未产生同等水平的积极影响，我认为这在整个行业大环境中是一致的，对吧？作为企业、出版商和零售商，我们仍在寻找那种双赢的局面。”

To add context to these statements, Reddit has long had a relatively lucrative ($60 million) licensing deal with Google, but Reddit is considering ending that deal, according to a Wall Street Journal report from earlier this month. The report also said that several prominent publishers are considering similarly cutting ties with Google, including The Economist, Reuters, Politico, and USA Today. (Reddit also has a deal with OpenAI.)

为了补充这些声明的背景，据《华尔街日报》本月初的报道，Reddit 长期以来与谷歌有一份相对丰厚（6000 万美元）的授权协议，但 Reddit 正在考虑终止该协议。报道还称，几家知名出版商也在考虑切断与谷歌的联系，包括《经济学人》、路透社、《政客》（Politico）和《今日美国》。（Reddit 同时与 OpenAI 也有合作协议。）

Last year, a study by Pew Research that looked at data from 900 US adults concluded that Google’s AI Overviews cut referrals to sites like those by almost half, compared to the “10 blue links” approach that Huffman referred to. It’s important to note, though, that Google has long diverged from just “10 blue links” in other ways even before AI Overviews entered the scene.

去年，皮尤研究中心（Pew Research）对 900 名美国成年人的数据进行了一项研究，结论显示，与 Huffman 所提到的“10 个蓝色链接”方式相比，谷歌的 AI 概览使流向此类网站的推荐流量减少了近一半。不过需要注意的是，即使在 AI 概览出现之前，谷歌在其他方面也早已偏离了单纯的“10 个蓝色链接”模式。

In light of the Pew Research study, Google told Ars, “This study uses a flawed methodology and skewed queryset that is not representative of Search traffic. We consistently direct billions of clicks to websites daily and have not observed significant drops in aggregate web traffic as is being suggested.” A few days later, Google further countered in its own blog post, saying, “total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been relatively stable year-over-year.” That contradicts what many publishers have been saying, though most publishers are of course wary of sharing too many proprietary numbers publicly.

针对皮尤研究中心的这项研究，谷歌告诉 Ars：“这项研究使用了有缺陷的方法和偏差的数据集，不能代表搜索流量。我们每天持续向网站引导数十亿次点击，并没有观察到所暗示的网站总流量出现显著下降。”几天后，谷歌在其官方博客中进一步反驳称：“来自谷歌搜索的网站总自然点击量同比保持相对稳定。”这与许多出版商的说法相矛盾，尽管大多数出版商当然对公开分享过多的专有数据持谨慎态度。

Part of the problem is that both publishers and Reddit have historically depended on regular Google search traffic, but in most cases, the current status quo treats being surfaced as one of the so-called blue links and being part of AI Overviews as a package deal. There have been several efforts to change that situation. Last year, we reported on Cloudflare’s attempt to update the default configuration for robots.txt in part to try to force Google to make changes. Google has also made changes to AI Overviews that it claims will lead to more prominent links out to other websites than before, but it still maintains that AI Overviews are here to stay and that they’re actually good for the user experience and the web in general.

问题的一部分在于，出版商和 Reddit 在历史上都依赖于常规的谷歌搜索流量，但在大多数情况下，目前的现状是将“作为蓝色链接之一出现”与“成为 AI 概览的一部分”视为一种捆绑交易。目前已有多次尝试改变这种状况的努力。去年，我们报道了 Cloudflare 试图更新 robots.txt 的默认配置，部分目的是试图迫使谷歌做出改变。谷歌也对 AI 概览进行了调整，声称这将比以前更显著地引导用户点击跳转到其他网站，但它仍然坚持认为 AI 概览将长期存在，并且对用户体验和整个互联网都有好处。

The situation remains unresolved, and Reddit’s shares fell more than 20 percent after the earnings report, even though the company’s quarter trounced investors’ expectations on most of the basic financials. The reason? Search referrals were “choppy,” in Huffman’s words, and investors are thus concerned about the future of the site as AI tools continue to disrupt the traditional economics of the web. Investors are concerned that Reddit can’t succeed without those Google referrals, and that concern can be extended to most other organizations in the business of producing content for the open web.

目前情况仍未解决。尽管 Reddit 本季度的基本财务数据大多超出了投资者的预期，但财报发布后，其股价仍下跌了超过 20%。原因何在？用 Huffman 的话来说，搜索推荐流量“波动不定”（choppy），因此投资者担心随着 AI 工具继续扰乱传统的互联网经济，该网站的未来将受到影响。投资者担心如果没有谷歌的推荐流量，Reddit 就无法取得成功，而这种担忧也适用于大多数其他从事开放网络内容生产的组织。