An Expanded Partnership with Reddit

blog.google

This confirms that Google was the mystery buyer of the $60M licensing deal with Reddit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39404051

...in which case, $60M seems low? Google would get more value than that from it.

What is Google paying for, exactly? Reddit's content is already public. Even free tools like F5Bot are already continuously downloading all of Reddit, and I'm sure they aren't paying $60M.

I suspect they're paying to avoid any future lawsuits or changes in the laws. Realistically they only need to scrape Reddit once, because the vast majority of useful training data will be years in the past.

If this deal lasts for more than a year I'll be shocked, and like you wonder even more just what the hell they're buying.

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