February 22nd 2024, Rajan Patel the Vice Present of Google announced their expanded partnership with Reddit. This partnership shifts a significant change of results across the search landscape, where we’ve seen a most interesting phenomenon – the trend of people appending Reddit to their search queries.
gaming news + reddit
cooking tips + reddit
This is a clear signal that, for better or worse, Reddit now fully owns the internet discussion as one social mega-network that has casually absorbed various historical formats such as forums, chatrooms and social networks which now primarily act as short term dopamine hit dispensaries.
Reddit as a search term has been steadily trending up over the last decade and not showing any signs of slowing down.
And so if such a large proportion of Google’s users sends signals strong enough to influence its auto-complete algorithms it’s no surprise to see the partnership between the two. Google has demonstrated, perhaps at its own disadvantage, that it cares about correctness and alignment more than product quality and performance.
They wouldn’t have done this deal unless they believe they have appropriate moderation in place.
This conviction arises from their faith in the adequate moderation they maintain (or their confidence in the refinement of their algorithms over time), rooted in their belief in Reddit’s provision of an “incredible breadth of authentic, human conversations and experiences,” as expressed by Rajan Patel, VP of Google.
