I don't really understand reddit's angle here... Why would they provide zero cost API access to an app, as long as the developer of the app isn't making a profit? Are they trying to act like that was the issue they had with these third party apps? That they e profitable?
How does it make sense for them to allow an app for that reason?
That's what Narwhal dev had publicly offered previously, there's no firm confirmation that's actually the deal and I'd be a little surprised if it was.
I think Reddit chose to give them a sweetheart deal because they're the worst competitor app, the dev had been least publicly critical of the API changes, and Reddit wants the PR value of an example case "proving" their API changes weren't maliciously anticompetitive towards third-party apps.
The fact that Narwhal has struck a deal now allows Reddit Inc to say "see! we do work with third party apps; it's not that we're bad, it's that RIF and Apollo are big meanies who won't cooperate!"
While the technology shows promise, early testers have found that it falls short of a well-known search trick: adding "reddit" to the end of queries. Instead of directing readers to sites targeting SEO traffic, this straightforward technique draws on the knowledge of Reddit's community to provide actual help from forum...
To that end, Google recently unveiled a new feature called Perspectives, which aims to surface discussion forums and videos from various social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and Quora.
Google used to have this years ago. It was just a search toggle called "discussions" and it would prioritize search results from forums, comments, reddit, etc. It was extremely useful to find real information while avoiding SEO blogspam ad platforms, which is why they removed it in the first place.
Fidelity has cut Reddit valuation to $5.5B from $10B (techcrunch.com)
As Apollo and other apps close down, Narwhal seemingly agrees to one-off deal with Reddit to stay in business (9to5mac.com)
Google thinks its new Perspectives tab will finally get you to stop adding 'Reddit' to searches (www.androidpolice.com)
While the technology shows promise, early testers have found that it falls short of a well-known search trick: adding "reddit" to the end of queries. Instead of directing readers to sites targeting SEO traffic, this straightforward technique draws on the knowledge of Reddit's community to provide actual help from forum...