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Every week in Zero Clicks, we explore the interplay of AI, media, and commerce.

This week we’ll dive into…

• Big picture: Google ends its unspoken deal with SEOs and affiliates

• Job posts: Four great opportunities that embody the current vibe shift in media

• The meme is the message: The DOJ turns its thirsty eyes to TikTok

But first, a heartfelt thank you to the 125+ readers who showed up to our holiday gathering last night. I learned a ton, not least of which is that my scotch on the rocks weeknights may be behind me.

And many, many thanks to Wayward, Martech Record, and Methuselah Advisors for an outstanding dinner afterward. The conversation galavanted around spectacularly but as it always does these days, ultimately turned to AI.

The title of Benedict Evans’s 2025 trends report is “AI Eats The World” Maybe. But 2025 will be the year that we find out if internet users actually prefer the generative AI-led experiences being thrust on them by the powers that be. The oldest rule of commerce is that people vote with their wallets; snazzy new LLM-driven commerce applications look cool but we’ll learn next year if they actually get you to buy stuff. How we spend our time next year as marketers and media operators will fall in line accordingly.

In (mild) defense of Google

Hating on Google is easily the most consensus position in tech. The company that coined “don’t be evil” is now viewed as a 21st-century boss Tweed by a coalition that includes everyone from degenerate Reddit mods to the United States Department of Justice.

But in the sea of vitriol, nobody is more apoplectic than people who have made their living deep within Google’s ecosystem, particularly SEO experts and affiliate operators who are seeing their life’s work upended on the indiscernible whims of Silicon Tammany Hall.

On LinkedIn, Nick Broughall calls the most recent site reputation abuse the “latest example of Google being monopolistic bastards.” He didn’t hold back, “Google making itself the arbiter of what a business - particularly a media business - can or cannot cover is an abuse of its power.”

This is undoubtedly true. Furthermore, nothing in Lars Lofgren’s scathing diatribe against Google’s site reputation abuse policy is wrong. But I believe both miss the bigger picture of what is actually going on here.

In the wake of its first credible competitive threat since the Clinton administration, Google is rapidly trying to unwind what Brian Morrissey calls the sea of “direct marketing detritus” that it allowed to dominate search. Its early efforts have been clumsy and unsuccessful– generally penalizing independent media and high-quality entities who dipped their toes in growth hacky stuff while the real arbitrage boys continue to thrive, almost daring Google to delist their entire domains.

But from a philosophical point of view, ever so slightly, it seems like Google cares about the quality of search again with the advent of competition. No longer does the company feel it has the unchecked power to fill the entire page above the fold with ads and basically tell its users: “What are you gonna do tough guy, bing it?”

When it comes to its dealings with publishers, Google had almost a tacit agreement that went something like this: since we’ve upended the very fabric of the media business model, we’ll let you fool around with arbitrage schemes at the margin to make nickels back on the dollar, even if we feel these make the core search experience worse.

Parasite SEO? Sure, why the hell not? Weird coupon clickarounds that create an unnecessary level of friction? Meh, what’s one extra click in the grand scheme of our ephemeral existence?

If nothing else, OpenAI and Perplexity have at least created the perception that Google faces a credible threat. With it, they’ve shattered the unspoken accord that allowed many SEO and affiliate gurus to make millions in the shadow of trillions.

FORTUNE recommends senior editor Dia Adams breaks it down like this:

1. For a decade, Google spoke Spanish. So SEO taught Spanish.

2. Last year, Google changed from Spanish to Gibberish, but the SEO reaction was, "learn more Spanish".

3. Now Google has decided that any site that speaks Spanish fluently doesn't deserve to exist.

This is undoubtedly frustrating to people who have made a living marching to the beat of Google’s drum. But if Google does really feel that the moment is existential and that its current search product risks obsolescence, it’s hard to fault the company for making sweeping changes. When the dead rats are decaying deep within the walls, you have to reach for the sledgehammer. Relative to users, advertisers, and investors, SEOs and affiliates are pretty far down the pecking order so Google’s callousness to the collateral damage it causes to these groups is predictable. It isn’t personal, it’s strictly business.

If the market disagrees with what Google is doing, it is certainly sending confusing signals. For all the ink spilled, Google sits at $2.15T in market cap, less than 10% off the all-time high it reached this summer, right around the time AI Overviews were recommending glue on pizza.

What Google can and should be faulted for, however, is its selective media illiteracy, as if understanding the entities that populate the SERP is somehow a gauche position. Google’s Creator Summit– an event nominally held to gather feedback from publishers most impacted by helpful content updates– had the vibe of a lord who was reluctantly coming down to mingle with the serfs and reached for the sanitizer after shaking their hands.

It’s pretty clear at this point that Google can’t solve problems like parasite SEO algorithmically so it is forced to resort to drastic, clumsy manual actions. For tactics like this to work, Google has to know the companies it is taking manual actions against (and those that will benefit) inside and out. It does not.

For example, entities like CNN Underscored only dabbled in third-party content amidst a broader editorial strategy that focused on high-quality product and service reviews created by their team. Google Michael Corelone’d them anyway. Currently, Google chooses to bury its head in the sand on pesky details like this and as a result, many quality media outlets suffer.

This is an incredibly hard problem to solve at scale but Google has nearly infinite resources to do so. Hiring 20 of the smartest people in the business to form an “affiliate media literacy team” at Google would cost the equivalent of a rounding error in the sparkling water budget. Hell, if they haven’t called up Lars Lofgren and offered him half a million dollars to come in-house at this point, what are they waiting for? His blog is basically driving their roadmap anyway.

Finally, there’s always a question of how much enshittification is late-stage monopoly capitalism and how much enshittification is essentially big tech giving users the product experiences that they vote for with every tickle of their laptop keys. Google, Meta, and Amazon see billions of data points on users’ demonstrated vs. stated preferences that will never leave their walls.  Maybe the algo tweaks that are most indecipherable to those of us who live in Google’s world are simple pandering to the masses.

That said, leadership, and by extension, innovation, basically comes down to knowing when to deviate when the mob wants faster horses. 

It’s been another brutal December in media, with layoffs across business and editorial teams at several prominent publishers. As a result, we’re devoting this edition exclusively to opportunities suited to former reporters and media operators.

Executive Director, Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, CUNY

While there’s certainly some irony in CUNY naming its journalism school after Craig Newmark as Craigslist’s evisceration of newspaper classifieds is an underappreciated facet of what got us in this dilemma, the Tow-Knight Center does great work. Perfect job for someone who wants to build a better future for journalism. 

Content Marketer, Sierra AI

After years of languishing as an underappreciated and underpaid function within the marketing stack, content marketing is finally getting the attention it deserves, particularly at AI companies that... let’s face it, have a major content and brand problem.

This role pays around $200K and for good reason– Sierra is an incredibly well-funded and well-pedigreed player in the AI agent wars, with former Salesforce President Taylor as its founder. Not a bad landing spot for a tech journalist.

Brand Partner, Workweek

Now 3+ years into existence, Workweek sports an impressive roster of media businesses built around creators in DTC, healthcare, marketing, fintech, and more. I’ve always been confused by Adam Ryan’s “Barstool Sports of B2B” positioning but the company is perfectly capitalizing on the seismic shift of institutional to individual brands crossing the chasm from consumer to B2B.

The company is hiring for 5+ roles across its ad sales team, ranging from entry-level all the way to experienced enterprise sellers and people managers to help scale the business. While it’s mostly an ad sales operation, there are some really interesting concierge job services and software businesses being built around the creator newsletters that have massive margin potential. If you go work for Adam, you’re working for one of the smartest guys in media.

Head of Sales, Turpentine

Turpentine is a similar concept to Workweek in that it is essentially a holding company of indie creator media entities with shared services. While the company focused initially on podcasts, it now covers newsletters as well.

To my outside eye, Turpentine feels more ideological and dogmatically Silicon Valley than Workweek but is interesting nonetheless, with some very talented creators in its ecosystem. While the company brings in ad revenue, their true B2B media business is also a bit more nascent so this is something of a true zero-to-one sales gig.

There’s certainly a lot of room within the trend of people abandoning institutions for individuals for both brands to be successful and if I were a media seller, I’d be more inclined to bet my career on the rising tide vs. another declining legacy brand.   

Just one person correctly guessed that last week’s mystery company was Ulta. So we’ll go easy this week.

Just two companies that between them, are worth about ¼ of an AppLovin.

Reply directly to this email with your guess. First one to guess correctly (without help from AI) gets a shoutout next week (plus unlimited bragging rights in their company Slack).