Reddit CEO says Google AI Overviews still no 'win-win'

Reddit had the kind of quarter most companies would take a victory lap over, and the CEO used the earnings call to publicly question the biggest platform sending it traffic. That is the interesting part. According to Ars Technica, Steve Huffman told investors that with Google's AI Overviews, Reddit has 'still yet to find that win-win,' while insisting the two companies remain 'collaborative and looking for that.'

The numbers underneath the complaint are not weak. Reddit reported Q2 2026 revenue of about $804.9 million, up 61% year over year, adjusted EBITDA more than doubling to $343 million, and daily active uniques of 130.3 million, per CNBC. The stock still fell sharply in extended trading, with reports ranging from around 11% to more than 20% depending on when the print was taken, because Huffman described search referrals as 'choppy in the quarter' with traffic 'more volatile later in the quarter.' In a separate CNBC piece he was blunter: the '10 blue links have driven a tremendous amount of value for the whole ecosystem, and AI Overviews has yet to make a similar level of positive impact.'

Why this matters beyond Reddit: a lot of the open web's business model is a referral-traffic model dressed up as a content model. If the front door of Google search now answers the question inside the search page instead of sending the click onward, every publisher whose ads or subscriptions depend on that click is exposed to the same drift. Reddit is unusual only in that it has both the traffic exposure and, according to reporting, a licensing arrangement with Google worth roughly $60 million a year, which makes its predicament unusually public.

The honest caveat is that the reporting does not give a clean breakdown of how much of Reddit's revenue actually depends on Google-referred visitors, and the stock reaction reflects sentiment as much as disclosed mechanics. Take the specific percentage drops and the $60 million figure as reported, not as audited from Reddit's filings, and note that Huffman's framing, understandably, is the one that most flatters Reddit's forward pitch as the 'antidote to an automated web.'

The forward-looking read is that if AI-answer surfaces keep compressing referrals, the leverage shifts to whoever owns the underlying human content, and platforms with real communities, Reddit chief among them, get a clearer story to tell advertisers and model licensees than they had a year ago.