Death of the Browser

What is the Web without a browser? Through Chrome, Google has been supporting and stewarding the growth of the web as an ads-supported economy. Now, AI Agents and MCP threaten to change everything. Some might say the Web is about to die, but maybe it is about to be reborn like a phoenix.

01:12 - Early Web Development & Platform Shift 02:40 - Rise of AI and Decline of Traditional Search 03:21 - The Inshitification of Platforms 05:02 - Platform Lock-in and User/Supplier Dynamics 06:04 - Lack of Interoperability & Algorithmic Control 07:34 - Aggregators, APIs, and Platform Fatigue 08:11 - The Browser Monopoly & Chrome’s Dominance 09:32 - Google’s Incentives and Web Stewardship 10:18 - AMP, AI Summaries, and Impact on Creators 12:08 - The Agentic Web: Human, Crawler, and Agent Traffic 13:36 - AI Browsers & Personal Agents 15:04 - Mobile vs Desktop: The Shift to Apps and Agents 16:10 - Agents for Accessibility & Adaptive UX 17:24 - The Five Pillars for the Future Web 18:41 - Interoperability: Protocols and Tool Use 19:57 - On-Device AI & Small Language Models (SLMs) 21:06 - Agent Identity, Authentication, and Permissions 22:44 - Compensation, Micropayments, and Content Licensing 26:28 - Discovery, Recommendation, and Generative SEO 28:52 - The Future of Browsing: Agents vs Browsers 29:38 - Building for the Agentic Web: Tools & Best Practices 31:18 - Controlling Agent Access: robots.txt & Tar Pits 33:06 - Developer Roles & Decentralized Identity 34:15 - MCP UI & Rich Agent Components 35:16 - Get Involved: Open Standards & Working Groups 36:42 - Timeline: Past, Present, and Future of the Web 38:00 - The Browser’s Evolution and Eventual Disappearance 39:56 - The Rebirth of the Web: Decentralization & Interop 41:05 - Call to Action: Heralding the Rebirth of the Web