An Expectation Is Not an Agreement: The Traffic Was Never Yours

This week, US federal judge Amit Mehta dismissed the antitrust lawsuits that Penske Media—the publisher of Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Variety—and the educational platform Chegg had filed against Google over its AI summaries, known as AI Overviews. The companies' argument was clear: Google uses its dominance in search to force them to choose between allowing their content to feed those summaries and disappearing from search results. By answering questions directly on the search page, those summaries take away the visits their businesses depend on.

The judge's response fits into a sentence that should be framed in the office of anyone who depends on something they do not control: ‘An expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works,’ as reported by AppleInsider and Android Headlines. Mehta said he was not indifferent to publishers' economic harm, but referred the issue to lawmakers: it was not a matter for an antitrust lawsuit.

We will not debate here whether the ruling is fair. That is a legitimate discussion that will continue in courts and legislatures. What interests PRAXMA is the sentence, because it describes a mistake that major publishers are not alone in making. You make it whenever you build your life around someone else's habit and treat it as a right.

Traffic was never a contract

For two decades, a huge share of digital publishers organized their businesses around a flow: Google sent visitors, visitors generated advertising revenue, and advertising paid salaries. It worked for so long that it stopped looking like a flow and started looking like solid ground. No one signed for it. No one guaranteed it. It simply happened, year after year, until repetition was mistaken for obligation.

That is the mechanism. When something consistently benefits you, your mind stops registering it as a conditional gift and starts registering it as normal. Over time, normal becomes owed. When it disappears, you do not experience the loss of an advantage; you experience betrayal. But there was no betrayal. There was an agreement that existed only in your head.

It's the logic of putting your satellites on someone else's rocket: traveling in someone else's vehicle can be a smart decision, provided you never forget who owns it.

The expectations you treat as rights

Take the case out of the courtroom and into your life. How many of your certainties are actually unsigned expectations?

• Your job: ‘I have been here for ten years; they cannot do this to me.’ They can, if the contract allows it. Years of service are history, not armor.
• Your main customer: the person who buys 70% of what you sell is not your partner. They are your greatest risk with a friendly face.
• The platform: your followers live on a server you do not own, governed by an algorithm that changes without warning you.
• The relationship: ‘They were always there’ is not a commitment. It is a track record. And track records can end.

In each case, the blow comes not from the loss itself, but from the collision between what you believed had been agreed and what had actually been agreed. Every relationship operates under a contract no one signed, and when it breaks, the problem isn't betrayal. It's that the terms were never agreed.

It's the mechanics of one-sided loyalty: you give as though a reciprocal debt exists, while the other person receives as though it were only natural. Neither lied. Each was simply reading a different contract.

Complaining about the judge does not rebuild the business

The emotional reflex when faced with news like this is to take sides: Google is abusing its power, or publishers are whining. Both positions are comfortable because they make you a moral spectator. The useful question is different: if the flow you depend on is taken away tomorrow, what do you have left?

The publishers best positioned to withstand this won't be those who win an appeal, but those who already owned something: direct subscribers, mailing lists, a recognizable brand, and readers who arrive without an intermediary. In other words, assets that don't depend on anyone's goodwill. Denying this is ignoring reality, and that only postpones the bill and makes it more expensive.

That's why you take stock before building. We tend to plan ambitious futures with tools we've never inspected. The question isn't what others give you today, but what you control when they stop giving it to you.

A practical rule

Take your three main sources of income, recognition, or stability, and ask each of them three questions:

• Is there a written agreement, or merely a habit that has been repeated?
• Who can change the rules without asking my permission?
• If it disappears tomorrow, how long can I hold out, and what do I own?

If the first answer is "habit" and the second is "the other party," you don't have a right; you have exposure. That's not a reason to flee all dependence (no one builds alone), but to stop confusing the system's generosity with a promise. Delegating is fine. What destroys you is abdicating while thinking you delegated: handing over control and forgetting that you did.

The PRAXMA mindset

The idea: what you consistently receive does not become a right through repetition; if it has not been agreed, it is exposure, not a guarantee.
The fact: Judge Amit Mehta dismissed Penske Media's and Chegg's lawsuits against Google's AI summaries on the grounds that ‘an expectation is not an agreement’, according to AppleInsider and Android Headlines.
PRAXMA's line: ‘Habit makes you accustomed; only an agreement protects you. Everything else is borrowed ground.’

— PRAXMA, Logic over emotion

If this topic interests you, we go deep into the invisible contracts that hold a life together Spanish only and what to do before someone breaks them. We also talk it through on the podcast.

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